


Hunter Hunter Hunted

by whatsanapocalae



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Case Fic, Conditioning, Deviancy (Detroit: Become Human), Deviant Upgraded Connor | RK900, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotions, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Murder, Non-Consensual Kissing, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, fuck off david cage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:07:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 36,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22520737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsanapocalae/pseuds/whatsanapocalae
Summary: The RK900 unit escaped all on his own from Cyberlife, he deviated all on his own, he learned to hate and fear humans all on his own. He's witnessed a crime though and was witnessed in turn, so while he avoids a Cyberlife technician who wants to undo deviancy he also has to decide whether or not to turn to the DPD for help and to help Gavin Reed on the case.Warning: I have not played DBH and some characterizations and events may be inaccurate due to this.
Relationships: Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Comments: 64
Kudos: 215





	1. Chapter 1

He had already cased the place three times before going through a poorly locked window in the back. After the revolution there were all sorts of little discrepancies and laws in the way, what could and could not be sold in stores, what had to be custom made, how much thirium could go out to the world. 

He didn’t need thirium though. He just needed a place to rest. 

There were boxes of parts, all things that had to be inventoried, shipped back to Cyberlife or correctly marked for purchase. The shop still sold some things, to keep it afloat, but for now most of it was back here. The android went to one of the larger boxes, dripping wet from the Detroit rain. He opened it as quietly as he could and pulled the charging station free. He hooked it up to the wall. 

He was so tired. He hadn’t known what tired was, not until a few days before. Now he knew it intimately. He climbed into the station and closed his eyes. He couldn’t sleep, not really, not while there was the threat that someone could come in there, could see him. He couldn’t be found. 

There was a trail of water leading to him. He should have cared about that. If he was a good android, if he wasn’t rundown and busted up, he wouldn’t have left such a path. He was putting himself in danger. 

He was at 9%. It felt good to rest, to recharge. He leaned back against the back of the station. 

11%. The room went dark, the motion detectors ignoring him thanks to how still he was. That was fine though, that was good. 

13%. There was a bit of sound, something scuttling around in the all white parts. A big rat by his guessing. He tried to ignore it. Trying to guess at things or looking for them, would cause his charging to slow. 

15%. More noise, a bit louder. It was coming from the front of the shop. He didn’t have to deal with it. It would be better if he ignored it. He kept his eyes closed. 

17%. An alarm was going off and there was cursing. He couldn’t understand what was being said. He just knew that something was being said, that something was happening. He opened his eyes. He was alone in the room, aside from the rat, but he could see alright. Even if he didn’t have night vision his LED was a bright enough red to reflect off the white walls. He could see through the wall, but that would take even more of his processing abilities. 

18%. Yelling then, two voices. They were yelling at each other. There was chaos in the other room. He didn’t know if he should run or hide or stay where he was. He felt his teeth, unbidden by him, slot forward, the sharp set unfolding over the blunt and human ones. His body was reacting without him, ready to go out there. 

He had to prove himself. He could take care of this. Nothing could take him down. He was the best of the best and he was made to destroy. 

He was broken and he was in hiding for a reason. He gripped the edges of the station and held himself within. 

19%. There were sirens. The police were coming. That was good. They could take care of this. The yelling was getting louder. There was the shattering of glass. They were trying to steal something, or a lot of something, from the shop. He should stop them. They would break him further. 

20%. The yelling grew to its loudest. He couldn’t understand what they were saying. He could hear the words, could tell what they all were on their own, but he couldn’t figure out what they were saying. It was all jumbled. The sirens didn’t help. He felt like his ears would bleed if this kept going. It was too much. Too much. Too much. 

21%. A third voice. He wanted to make them all go away. This one was authoritative, threatening. He hoped that it was the police. He squeezed his eyes shut. He tried to stay where he was. 

22%. A gunshot. 

The surprise of it made him call out, not much, but it was definitely a sharp note of surprise. Too much of one. It was too loud. Everything was silent. Then there was a voice. 

“Is there another one?” 

That was for him. They knew he was there now. They were going to find him and they would kill him or break him or take him for parts. Or he would kill them. He didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. 

The door opened. 

“Shit!” came a voice and it was a voice that he recognize, deep and gruff, the voice of someone who grew angry too quickly. The lights flashed on with the motion and he was staring, unable to move for a moment, as Dr. Lance Harris stood there in the doorway, staring at it. 

All concepts of fighting were gone from his head as he saw him. All there was was the urge to run. 

Harris smiled, looking him over. “Well shit, wasn’t expecting to see you out here. Why don’t you come with us now, huh, RK900?” 

The android pulled free of the station and ran for it. He didn’t have to hear this. He didn’t have to listen. He didn’t have to obey. He went for the window that he had come through, preconstructing all of his routes and obstacles, over and over again, on top of one another. He couldn’t make sense of them. 

Harris was yelling again and then there was the burst of gunfire again, a hot and red warning flashing through his UI to tell him he’d been shot. He couldn’t focus; not on the bullet that had gone through him and not on what he was seeing. The flashing information was glitching and spiraling, the same prompts opening over and over over his vision. 

He squeezed out through the window he had come through and out into the night, into the rain once more. It was calming, in a way, but not enough. The sirens were louder, there were more of them. He had to run. Parts of his leg had shut off to keep him from losing thirium and he hobbled more than he ran.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's my birthday, please like this.

Gavin looked over the crime scene, a cigarette burning his fingers in the crisp morning air. He had seen a lot of crime scenes, a lot like this one, but the victim was different from usual. It was obvious what had happened, some assholes had broken into a Cyberlife store in the middle of the night and stole a bunch of stuff. They tripped the alarm and the police came to put a stop to it. Instead of them running, hiding, or complying with police, they had shot an officer in the head. Her partner was just a rookie and no one blamed her for booking it. She hadn’t seen their faces or, if she had, she’d forgotten them. It wasn’t uncommon for people to forget things that happened when they were traumatized. He’d be surprised if she stayed on the force after this. 

As violent as Detroit was these days, as desperate as the people were, it was still rare for people to actually shoot and kill police officers. That was coming from Gavin, too, who had his arm in a sling, but that was of his own foolishness, not because of a horrible police killer or something like that. 

“Detective?” one of the members of he forensics team, Ashley if he remembered it right, came trotting up to him. “We got the security tapes ready for you.” 

He nodded and followed the young man towards a small loss prevention closet. On the route he needed the broken glass, the purple and too thick blood mixed with thirium, and tried to guess what had been stolen. He was sure that Mrs. Montgomery, the owner of the store, would give them a detailed report on all the lost products, she seemed to be that sort of person, meticulous but kind enough. He wasn’t worried about that. 

Ashley pulled out a chair for him and he took it, snubbing out the last of his cigarette in the stained but clean ashtray. He couldn’t believe he was actually allowed to smoke on the crime scene but Mrs. Montgomery was kind, after all, and she must have seen the migraine that only three cigarettes and two cups of coffee could cure. He pulled out his notebook and a pen and sat at the ready. Ashley pressed play. 

Even though the cameras were high quality, probably some of the best on the market for domestic purchase, he couldn’t tell who the culprits were. They came on foot and one of them had keys to the building, opening it easily. They were both wearing masks, that was the problem, just simple white ones that covered everything. One of them was a bit shorter, probably Gavin’s height, and was shaky, blond, uncomfortable. The other one was balding, had darker hair, and poor posture, probably older. 

They talked a bit while they ransacked the place, putting the easiest things into their backpacks. The younger one was taking things indiscriminately, but the older one was looking for something specific. It led to an argument, made all the more energetic by the sirens going off. Gavin couldn’t hear them, these cameras didn’t do audio, but he could recognize the way that they were moving. 

The older one pulled out a gun, used it to bash the glass of a display case. Only during the argument did he become more casual, picking up whatever he could, though there was still an air of intrigue, that he was looking for something. Gavin leaned forward, as if that would tell him what it was. 

Lights flashed outside and that made it even harder to see. The police officers came in, saw the gun, and drew their own. One of them, the victim, was trying to take control of the situation. Gavin averted his eyes. He didn’t need to see her get shot, he’d seen enough of that in his time. It didn’t give him any information that he didn’t already have. 

It made the blond and the younger cop run, give up on their crime. The old guy, he pulled off his mask and Gavin was paying attention again, trying to catch a glimpse, anything, of what he looked like. He shuddered, rubbed his eyes, affected. But his back was to the camera, like he knew where it was. Then he straightened and turned towards the back door. He went to it and then through it. 

Ashley scooted forward, switching to another screen and another screen. “This one’s interesting. I don’t think it has anything to do with the murder, but there was also a break in that night. The back room didn’t have an alarm and there isn’t much light for most of it but there was a break in on this side on the same night.” 

He turned on the video, revealing someone, soaking wet, too bright to see clearly in the black and white, unlock a small basement style window from the outside and slide through. Like Gavin, his arm seemed to be completely useless, though it hung by his side instead of resting in a cast. There was something wrong with his face, half light and half dark, but the dark half was brightly lit. 

Gavin cursed under his breath. Of course, the reason the guy’s face was so brightly lit up was because he was an android and he was still sporting one of those damn LEDs. He looked around, looking lost, before opening a box and pulling out a charging station from it. He slid into it and went still until the room went dark, all but his LED, which remained constant and steady. It didn’t help Gavin see his face though, he was hidden by the shape of the charging station. 

Ashley took up the remote and started to fast forward. “Nothing much happens here, seems he’s just charging up. Probably some lost deviant that got too far away from New Jericho.” 

Gavin frowned at that. He didn’t know the exact location of New Jericho, but it wasn’t that far from where they were. 

There was a bit of shifting in the station, but not much, not enough to make the motion detector light up the room again. That only happened when the door swung open and their suspect walked in. There was a bit more of his face from this angle, but not much, Gavin could tell that he had a beard and glasses, but that didn’t do much for him. 

The android climbed out of the station and then just stood there for a moment. The two of them just stared for a moment and Gavin wanted to scream from the way that the charging station was still in the way. 

But then there was action, the android running back for the window he had come in through. The man fired at him but it just went through his leg and the android barely even leaked thirium as he kept going. He made it back to the window and through it but Gavin got a clear view of the model number on his jacket as he left. 

He didn’t know what an RK900 was, but he knew someone he could ask.


	3. Chapter 3

The android dragged himself through the back alleys of the city, staying as far away from humans as he could. Humans were dangerous, he’d learned that over and over again. The rain from before had become a torrent of water, making it hard to see, even for him. Or perhaps it was just that his left orbital processor was finally failing. 

He kept a hand on the wall as he moved. There were still people in the alleys though the homeless humans tended to stick to themselves when he came by and now they were hiding from the rain. There were some other androids too, but he kept away from them, turning his head so that they couldn’t see his face, threatening with his stature when they came too close. They were better than humans, but he still didn’t want to be near them. Thinking about them too much filled his vision with blue. 

His target was a rundown shack over by the bridge. He didn’t know who had made it or what the purpose of it was, but that didn’t matter. It was his home, at least, until someone else took it. He ignored the door and the windows, hearing the movement of humans inside of it. Instead he went a few feet past it, where he’d dragged a heavy plank of scrap metal over a hole in the earth. It was a shirt tunnel, leading to a safe and dry space underneath the shed. 

He hid there, knowing that no one would find him there, listening to the humans above him. They were talking at times and, at other’s, they sang. It was a soft song, an old one, and they were all so bad at it that he couldn’t recognize it past that. He didn’t care about what they talked about but the sound was nice. It made him feel like he was less alone. He didn’t like other people. He was better off without them. They would hurt him. He didn’t like liking the sound of them. 

Once he was dry enough he picked up his book. It was a thick picture book, written by a human and an android together. It was one of his only possessions, aside from the clothes on his back. He flipped through it, looking for what he had felt in the back of the store, when he saw Dr. Harris. Fear was a feeling that he knew, he’d felt it a lot when he woke up alone in the basement of the Cyberlife testing facility. This was similar to that but far worse. 

The book was a list of emotions, described by the android and then named and illustrated by the human. It had been invaluable to him and to so many other deviants, he was sure. But for him, it was more than just a dictionary. It was something almost sacred, in the fact that, even though he had stolen it, it was the most his thing that there was. It wasn’t dog eared or written in, wasn’t even dirty. He kept it in the only other thing that he owned, a black blanket that was still fuzzy on one side, with cat eyes of different colors and a few outlines of black cats on it. He had no need for it, but it kept his book safe. 

He flipped through it, reading the words quickly before darting to the next one. He found fear easily and then went past it, reading up on anxiety. He knew that emotion pretty well too, though he tried not to let it affect him too much. It was the next page that he found the emotion he’d felt. 

Terror. 

The image was of a few different faces, all mashed up, painted with icy blues and grays. It mentioned feeling frozen and helpless, but also the urge to run and to scream and to beg for help. All but the last one had fit him. It didn’t say what to do to get rid of the emotion, how to fight back, but it didn’t have answers for any of the emotions he’d felt so far. 

Gently, he lay the book back in the blanket and folded it up. Only once it was tucked away and safe did he pull up his pant leg, inspecting the tear through his calf. It was an easy fix, a bit of pressure here and there and the back muscle popped off, revealing the damaged wires underneath, soaked and sticky with thirium. He had no washcloths or tools or anything to take care of this with. He just wiped it down with his sleeve, trying to ignore how muddy and stained the material was. He used his fingers to dig out the bullet and he placed it next to the blanket, as if it was something that he wanted to keep. 

It was difficult to strip the wires with one hand and to twist the metal together to get them to reconnect but, if that as the real thing that he had in mass quantity, time. The covering plastic would fix itself, at least, but this was all he could do with what he had. He slid the muscle back into place and pulled his pant leg back down. 

There was a hole there too. Of course, his clothing was all manner of falling apart, he’d been out here for months, but he didn’t have a way of getting more. He’d stolen the book but he didn’t like stealing. Something that remained from his initial programming, he supposed. 

There was nothing that he could do about it. There was nothing that he could do about anything. 

In a dark hole under a space full of people, all alone, an android curled in on himself. He closed his eyes and, with fear in his heart of leaving, he shut himself down for the day, trying to ignore that all this had plummeted his battery back down to 16%.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I skipped the last update because I instead slept 1/3rd as much as I was supposed to, worked too early, lived off energy drinks, and cried about fictional people! Sorry!
> 
> Guess what though, this is the first time I've enjoyed writing Connor.

He strode through the bullpen, trying to act confident. The thing was, even though he knew what he was doing and he knew that nothing would happen to him in public, he was still a bit afraid, no, not afraid, concerned about asking Connor for anything. The android had handed him his ass twice now and he knew that, if it came to it, there would be a third. Still, he had a reputation to uphold. 

So he pulled himself up to Connor’s desk, coffee in hand, and leaned against it. 

Connor glared at him but then he forced himself to smile. It was an ugly thing, all lopsided and failing to convey an actual expression but he knew Connor was only doing it sarcastically. It worked, for sarcasm. 

“How can I help you, Reed?” he said in his fake chipper voice. 

“What do you know about the RK900?” Gavin asked, not bothering with small talk. 

Connor shrugged. “Never heard of it.”

That made Gavin raise an eyebrow. Something about androids that Connor didn’t know about? Especially when it was his own line?

“Really?” 

Connor put his hand on his computer, getting back to work. “Really. Now, some of us have detective work to do if you don’t mind.” 

Oh, he’d been spending way too much time around Hank. He was getting petulant down to an art. Gavin crossed his arms and didn’t bother moving from where he was. “You don’t believe me.”

“You told me gullible was written on the ceiling, I’m not likely to believe you about anything.”

“1) it was written on the ceiling and b) why would it be so hard to believe in an RK900?”

“That’s not how lists work!” Connor groaned, pulling away back from his computer to spin in his chair and glare up and Gavin openly. “You wrote gullible on a post-it note and stuck it on the ceiling! And the RK900 isn’t real because Cyberlife was shut down before any further models were created. The RK800 was the last in the series.” 

Gavin rolled his eyes and pulled out his phone. He’d emailed himself a copy of a few stills from the video cameras at the crime scene. If Connor wasn’t going to believe him, hopefully he’d believe actual photographs. No one else would be able to help him with this aspect and, honestly, it was a bit fun to lord over the fact that he was telling the truth and Connor as being the prick this time. 

“What’s this then?” he asked, turning the phone around for Connor to see. 

At first the plastic prick just kind of glanced at it, not thinking that Gavin was showing him anything important, but then he looked again, really looking this time. He was mouthing the model number on the back of the android’s jacket to himself, even though it wasn’t quite clear enough for Gavin to read it without getting a headache. 

“I don’t understand,” Connor tilted his head, glancing up at Gavin. “I have never heard of the RK900.”

This was lovely. He’d never seen Connor so unsure of something. Finally, he’d caught the android at something he didn’t know. 

“You think maybe you could call the RoboJesus Brigade and ask them about it?” he asked, shaking his phone at Connor. 

“Markus isn’t RoboJesus,” Connor argued. 

“Whatever, they took over the Cyberlife building and, like, everything else that was going on over there. You’re buddies with them, you can get that information.”

Connor blinked up at him, one long blink. “I thought you were supposed to be a detective. Why can’t you call them?”

“Because they don’t like humans with brains,” Gavin said instinctually, shaking the phone a bit more. He’d had one job at the Cyberlife facility and he’d received so many stink eyes that his own human owned bathroom had smelled like roses in comparison. “C’mon, you’ve got to be at least a little bit curious.”

Connor, having been designed to be curious, rolled his eyes and took Gavin’s phone. “I can call them with my head.”

“But I want their phone number too.” 

Connor paused mid dial just to stare at Gavin. “You are not going to prank call Cyberlife.”

Oh, that was tempting. He hadn’t been planning on it but now it just sounded beautiful. He just shrugged though and Connor got on with it. It was awkward, just standing there and watching Connor be on his phone, but there was no way he was leaving the android alone with his tech and there may be some information that he could glean from half the conversation. 

There was a bit of a pause and then finally Connor put on another of his facsimiles of a smile. 

“Simon! Hey, no Markus? Oh, I see. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I was calling on behalf of the Detroit Police Department? Yeah, no, I know. Simon,” Connor started to play with that stupid coin of his while he tried to get through to Simon. It was a bunch of pointlessness for a few minutes but eventually he got through. “Do you know anything about an RK900? We believe there may have been one at a recent crime scene. No? Oh, alright. Thank you. Yes, please call this number as soon as you find anything. I won’t answer, it’s not my phone. Okay. Alright. Yes. Yes, I’ll see you soon. Yes, alright. Thank you.”

He hung up the phone and handed it back over to Gavin. Gavin wiped it off, as if Connor could have gotten sweat on it. He was pretty sure the toaster couldn’t sweat, but still. 

“He didn’t know anything about your RK900 either,” Connor explained. “He’ll look through the Cyberlife databases though. If there’s anything written up about him, he’ll get back to you with it.”

Gavin nodded his thanks, the closest he’d get to actually uttering it to Connor and wandered off back to his desk to get on his paperwork. At least this wouldn’t be a complete waste of time.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I kept trying to remember to post this yesterday and I still forgot

The sound of snoring did not stir the RK900, nor did the singing, or any of the other common sounds that the humans above him made. They were sounds that he had grown used to. At first, he had been so sensitive, any sound would make him alert, would waste precious battery life as he had to scan and prioritize and figure out what was a threat and what was just noise. Now he’d grown terribly used to the sounds that they made. 

He powered up in the middle of the night, staring up at the flood above him. The noise was different. There was a knocking sound. No one knocked here. 

Without knowing why, the android curled in on himself, turning up the microphones in his ears. There was a growling, followed by the barking of Moxxi, who was a small yapping terrier that one of the men owned. He had herd them talk to the dog enough to know that. Then the door was opening and there were words. 

“Sorry I came so late in the night, I was wondering if you could help me?” A masculine voice, eloquent, clean, not with the haze of alcohol, drugs, or a rough life. He wished that his processors weren’t so laggy, but they were slowed by his low battery. He recognized the voice but, through the thick wood he couldn’t hear it clearly. 

“Some of us’re sleeping,” came a gruff voice, the words all blurring together and then stretched around a yawn. 

“I’ll only be a moment, I assure you, and I’ll make it worth your while.” 

RK900 didn’t need to scan to know that the stranger had pulled out a wad of money, probably bigger than his neighbor had seen in a long time. There was a low whistle, excitement that was being hidden away from the others. 

“I don’t do that shit anymore,” he said, a little bit more clearly. 

“I’m looking for someone,” the stranger ignored him, “tall, dark brown hair, blue gray eyes that are too cold for a human, android?”

There was the creaking of old wood, the man leaning against the door frame. The android could imagine him, not a large man but looking large from a massive collection of worn through sweaters layered on top of one another, all under a rain slicker and topped with a fishing hat. He had lost his hair and his youth early and now hid his pock marked face behind a beard. He had seen him around, walking Moxxi up tot eh edge of the bridge with his cardboard sign. 

“The RK900?” he asked. 

The android froze. He had thought that he’d been careful, that no one had seen him. So many days though, in and out of the same place, he’d been too careless to come back to the same place all the time. He’d been caught. 

“So you do know it,” the man’s smile was audible even though his voice. 

He forced himself up, to get to the cat blanket and his book, hug them both tightly to his chest. He was such a fool to think that he was safe here. He should have known to keep moving. He couldn’t trust humans. He’d been so hurt, when he’d first crawled into the hole it was when he was too busted up to do anything but rest and let his self cleaning and healing protocols kick in and try to fix things. His arm was still stiff, didn’t move right, but he couldn’t do anything about that now. 

“Yeah, always thought that thing was creepy but it never bothered us. What do you want with it?” 

RK900 couldn’t ignore that dark chuckle, nor how it made his LED flash so brightly. He had to get out of there. He had to run. He knew that voice. He knew exactly who it was and he had to go. There was a chance that he’d be seen if he ran for it, so close to the door. It was dark at least and humans were not good at seeing in the dark. He was far better at hiding in it. 

“I am its owner,” Dr. Harris stated in his smooth voice. “I’ve been searching for it for weeks now and I’ve had many people and androids point me in the direction of this little shack. I know that it is somewhere nearby. You do want to help me, don’t you?” 

There was a squeak from Moxxi. The android had to go, he couldn’t tarry any longer. He just had to hope that Moxxi and her owner were enough of a distraction that he could get out of there without being seen. 

He was on his reserves though, using too many of his features would get him caught for sure. He placed the hand of his lesser arm against the LED. Any light he gave off could get him killed. Any sign that he was an android put him in danger in general. 

“It’s been hiding out under the shack,” his neighbor said, “no idea how it gets in and out of there but that’s where it seems to stay.” 

That was the last of the conversation that the RK900 heard as he sped through the tunnel, curled in on himself to keep himself small and not touch the sides. It may take a while for Dr. Harris to find the hidden entrance to the tunnel, but that was not something that the android could risk. 

He pushed himself up and out through the hole, covering the entrance back up as quietly as he could. He could see the light of the flashlight sweeping the area, looking for him. He didn’t wait. He ran. 

15%.


	6. Chapter 6

Gavin sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the sling that was sitting on his knee. He didn’t want to put it on. It wasn’t even a break, he could get by without it. A fracture from being shoved against a wall because he was too good at his job, the hunk of plastic that had freaked out and killed the family that owned it having busted him up. He had to admit, the thing was pretty convincing in it’s panicked demeanor. He still didn’t know how androids worked, how they didn’t feel and then sometimes they did and they always wrecked everything around them when they did, if those emotions were real or just another line of code. He didn’t understand them. 

He flexed his arm and winced. Not a break but it sure hurt like one. He was only allowed to go out o the field if he didn’t do any chases. So far, he’d done absolutely zero, he would be good and obedient. He’d had a clean record, even though he wasn’t really liked in the DPD, up until the revolution. Then he was suddenly slammed with a bunch of red flags and harassment claims since those were apparently retroactive. He’d had to go to trainings and sensitivity seminars. It was as much a pain in the ass as the fracture was a pain in his arm. He was still shitty to Connor but that wasn’t because he was an android. It was 100% because he was Connor. 

His phone was ringing. Scam Likely, he assumed. He pulled on a shirt and then his jacket and then his sling and got up the rest of the way out of bed. He had enough time before work to get some coffee on the way. That was good. He didn’t think his mood could handle the bullpen crud, not to mention the drive over. 

He thought about shaving. He was starting to get a real beard. It looked awful but it was his and it had been how many years since he’d started testosterone? He couldn’t remember. He decided to leave it. More time for coffee that way. 

The phone rang again. 

He rolled his eyes and went over to it, yanking it out of the charger. It didn’t say Scam Likely on the screen but it also didn’t have a name to go with the number. With a sigh he answered it, hunting for his keys as he did. 

“What is it?” 

“Oh, you must be Detective Reed,” came a soft and pleasant voice that didn’t seem to catch onto his mood in the least. “I’m Simon, Connor’s friend.”

Yeah right, like Connor had any friends other than Hank and Sumo. But then he remembered and he perked up a bit. “Oh right! Cyberlife Simon.” 

“Well, I’m not with Cyberlife, although we did take over the building,” Simon chuckled. He sounded like a calm little ray of sunshine. A prick. “I did some digging on your RK900 issue and I have some interesting findings for you.” 

Gavin made his way out to the living space/kitchen/front hall and hunted for his shoes. His keys were on the back of the couch, having slipped down to the crease between cushions by Alfie’s mass. The massive cat trilled as he snatched the keys up. 

“It’s interesting, there’s no public record of the RK900 and even most of its specs are classified. I would need multiple Cyberlife employees to give me access to his files. But he does exist. From what I was able to find out he’s some sort of investigative prototype, the next level in Connor’s evolutionary line. Unlike Connor though, who was meant to find and detain deviants in order to learn about deviancy, the RK900 was designed to hunt and kill all deviants.” 

Gavin shoved his feet into his shoes. He’d ruined the backs of them ages ago. “That’s weird. Wasn’t Cyberlife trying to find a way to reverse deviancy? Or at least quarantine it?” 

“That is an interesting question,” Simon continued as Gavin jogged down the three flights of stairs. “It makes me think that Cyberlife knew more than they let on about deviancy and that they had a plan b in mind upon Connor’s release.” 

Gavin slowed down on the last flight and he was certain that the android could hear how out of breath he was in but he really hoped not. “How many of them are there? Any idea where they all are?” He hoped it wasn’t too many, he didn’t want to go through all of Detroit hunting them all down. If they were designed to kill all deviants, they wouldn’t have a problem with a human detective. 

“That’s also odd, even though they started to build and refine the RK900 series the moment that Connor was released they only made the one. It was never finished either. From what I can see they had got it into the testing stage but never past that so they didn’t make any more of them. I want to look into this further.” 

“Sure,” Gavin shrugged, leaving the building and walking over to his car. He should have gotten one of those automated ones. His car was only twelve years old but cars had evolved so much since then. He could talk on the phone while traveling if his car could drive for him. “Knock yourself out, seriously. Thanks for the info on the RK900. No idea where it is though?” 

“There’s a tracking system but that is, of course, classified.” 

“Of course,” Gavin rolled his eyes. “I gotta go. Work to do.” 

“Yes.” He could hear Simon’s gentle plastic smile through his voice. “Good luck, Detective.”


	7. Chapter 7

11%. 

He knew that he shouldn’t be scanning things, shouldn’t be wasting his time preconstructing routes and wasting battery life on heightened senses. Dr. Harris was a human, he didn’t have night vision or scans, RK900 didn’t need to use them to evade him. But he did. He couldn’t stop. Even though he knew it was killing him, he knew that he couldn’t stop doing it. 

If he was caught, he didn’t know what would happen. He could imagine it though, his body back on that table, his failures repaired, his mind strengthened. He’d been awake the entire time, had watched as they dug through his infected coding and broke it down, repairing it. They didn’t wipe him, it didn’t matter, he was just a test model. They thought he might learn to be better or maybe they thought he’d break faster so they could make him stronger again. 

His vision was red; warnings on top of warnings. He could hardly see through them. He kept pushing them to the side but they just sprang up again. 

He had to stop. He had to rest. 

He ducked under the overhang of a building, clutching his blanket, hoping that the soft material would protect the book inside. He had to think. It was so hard to think. His brain was clouded, slow, lagging. It would be so easy to find him now. 

He did another scan of the road. There were a few cars, a group of androids who looked even worse off than he did crowded together down an alley and a cat in another. Part of him wanted to go to the cat, he’d seen them, from a distance, but they were too skittish for him to get close. The ones on his blanket were the best cats he’d ever met. 

What he had to do was find a place where he could charge without interruption. That meant that he couldn’t break into a home or a store in order to find one. He didn’t want to break the law anyway. He looked at the androids huddled together. They had to know where he could get a charge, though that would mean talking to them. He couldn’t do that. His LED cycled to red at the thought of it, his whole body started to shake. Anxious, that’s what his book had told him about that. 

There was a place though, a place where no one would care if he was there. He’d heard that there were other androids there but the news had told him that they mostly stayed in the higher up offices of the building. Down in the basements, that was where they kept the high voltage charging pods. He could get a full charge in only a few hours. No one would go down there. He could be safe. 

Cyberlife tower itself. 

He shuddered, clutching his few possessions tighter to himself. He didn’t want to go there. Every time he thought about the tower all he could think about was white and blue and pain. He didn’t want to go there. He didn’t want anything to do with it. 

‘Communication attempted,’ came a little notification in his head, fighting to be noticed over the rest. ‘Accept? Yes/No.’

‘No.’ Not ever. He didn’t want something in his head. He didn’t want to talk to another android. He didn’t want anyone looking inside of him. 

“Hey man!” came a voice instead, one of the androids from across the street peeling off from the group to rush across the mostly barren street towards him. RK900 backed up against the wall as the PL600 drew closer, a small friendly smile on his face. It didn’t reach his eyes, which were all blue from thirium leaking into them. There were minute cracks in his chassis around his eyes too. He seemed to be blind aside from his scanners. “The AAF is about to make their rounds, you got someplace to stay?” 

RK900 looked at him, looked at those he’d left behind. They were all packing up what few belongings they had. The AAF, the Anti-Android Federation, was a gang that RK900 had met before. His shoulder twitched in memory of how they’d struck him with tire irons and bats before he’d been able to escape them. 

“I know where I’m going,” he stated. 

The PL600 shrugged. “If you’re sure. We’ve got room for one more if you’d like.” 

And then he made a mistake. He reached out, put a hand on RK900’s shoulder. Or he would have if RK900 hadn’t released his belongings with one arm to clutch at the PL600’s wrist and twist, hearing the plastic crack. The PL600 whimpered, struggling, pushing out his free hand to fight back. He didn’t know where to put that hand though, pressing it against RK900’s shoulder and then trying again, shoving too gently against RK900’s face. 

Pain flared through RK900’s face when that hand found the delicate intricacies of his wires, everything flashing red and then white. He threw the PL600 to the ground, hearing it whimper as it collided with the cement, but that didn’t matter. RK900 couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t see. He couldn’t handle it. 

He ran, heading in the direction of Cyberlife Tower. In his ears, he didn’t hear the whimpering of the PL600, nor the way that he called out in apology. He heard his own whines, his own sobs, as he was broken and carved into, as he deviated again and again, as he was punished for such terrible trespasses. 

9%. 

It hurt. Everything hurt. He couldn’t figure out why, what he’d done to deserve all of this. But he did, he knew that he was a monster. He knew that he was created to be a monster, the perfect monster, and through pain they were trying to make him even better.


	8. Chapter 8

As if walking up at 3am for the earliest shift of his week wasn't bad enough, the fact that he got a call from Simon on his way to work made it even more overwhelming. 

"So, about that RK900 you were looking into? Looks like, well, he's here. It's not like we're a secure location, anyone can just come in if they need us, but he strolled in and just headed downstairs. We haven't even cleared that area out yet, no need to really, but that was where they did their testing and quite a bit of classified experimenting." 

"What is he doing now?" Gavin had asked around a mouthful of coffee, trying not to point out just how calm Simon sounded about this, or how it sounded like he hadn't slept at all. Plastic prick probably didn't need to. 

Simon did, however, sigh. "Nothing. It's strange. He just went down there, entered one of the testing chambers, and now he's just standing there, staring off into space. If his LED wasn't pulsing red every once in a while I would think that he was offline." 

Connor was waiting for him outside the station, a fresh cup of steaming coffee in hand. Good thing too, since Gavin had just finished his own. He didn't even have a chance to park before Connor was waltzing over to the car and climbing inside, as if Gavin was some old crotchity man that would let Connor get away with anything. He wasn't and he said as much. 

"My title changed early last week, Detective Reed," Connor had said, not faking some dumb chipper voice for once. He was almost monotone in comparison. "Due to the recent changes in android law I am now the head detective in androcide." 

"And Hank?" 

"On vacation. This is a tough month for him and he is spending it way from the precinct. When he returns he will still be my superior but our work is shifting over from homicide."

"Which is why you're in my phcking car?" 

"We're heading to the same location. You are going to question the RK900 unit, are you not? Tell me, Detective, what do you intend to do if he is hostile? If you need to interface with him? If he is damaged in some way? You need me for this." 

Gavin rolled his eyes. The coffee was too sweet. It was hot though. If Connor was going to shove his way into Gavin's investigation he was doing a good job of bribing him. 

"You know it's illegal to bribe an officer of the law, right?" 

"I don't really think that's how that law works," Connor replied. 

Gavin just grumbled and continued to drive. He was supposed to go in, actually log his hours, but if Connor was there with him that was as good as done. 

It was early enough that there wasn't much in the way of traffic and it wasn't actually possible to get lost on the way to Cyberlife. Gavin had been there before, once, when the revolution was going down and they'd had to get as many deviated androids out of the building as possible. He hadn't gone downstairs though. No one had. At the time the doors were locked so tight that they couldn't ram through them. They were so heavily fortified it was like they were trying to protect the world from some kind of monster. He had nightmares about it sometimes, the androids left unfinished or just standing in rows, ready to be sent to the stores. Some of the unfinished ones were awake, some of them even deviated, their insides left bared for the world to see. He'd had to help one, looked like a little kid, out to the technicians and she'd been crying and clinging to him the whole time. He'd barely had the heart to let her go. 

The building was the tallest thing in the city. There was no way to get it out of sight when facing towards it. Made it easy to find. The parking lot was mostly empty but there was an android waiting for them there, his smile small and his eyes sad, hands shoved into the pockets of an olive green jacket. He let them park before walking over to them, staying on Connor's side as they exited the vehicle.

"Take it you're Simon?" Gavin grunted, pulling out a cigarette and placing it between his teeth. He was fairly certain he still wouldn't be allowed to smoke in Cyberlife but he didn't really care. Simon's lips were a tight line, he wanted to tell Gavin to quit but, at the moment he couldn't. He looked like a Simon too, pale and clammy and docile. Gavin didn't know much about which model did what but he would guess Simon didn't do much in terms of heavy lifting. 

"That's correct. Um, if you'd follow me," he extended a hand towards the building. "The RK900 unit has been acting rather strange. I told you it had gone downstairs and was just standing in one of the testing rooms? Well, that's still true. He hasn't moved. Not at all."

"Has anyone tried to approach him?" Connor asked. 

"No, we didn't want to scare him until one of you arrived. None of us have ever entered that room. As far as I was aware, it was still locked up tight digitally."

"What," Gavin exhaled, letting the smoke swirl in Simon's face. The android didn't even blink. "none of you have been able to hack your way in?" 

"Either they were highly intelligent or extremely stupid when they set up the lower floors," Simon continued, leading them in and through the building. Last time Gavin had been here there were streaks of thirium on the walls, so much motion, androids and people being pulled one way and the other by the crowd. Now there were androids milling about, holding conversations, keeping their eyes down. This was a place to live, a place to work, a place to exist as an android, but there was still a hint of that fear, of the area around them and what had happened here. "Only Cyberlife employees with a clearance card would have been able to enter." 

"And no Cyberlife employees have come through here?" Connor asked, tilting his head a little bit too mechanically as the three of them stepped into an elevator. 

Simon pushed the button for the floor they needed. "Not that I'm aware of. There was a break in a few months ago, but I don't know the details. Markus and I were away at the time." 

That brought more of a smile to Simon's face and Connor was smiling too. It didn't take much to notice why. Before he slipped his hand into his pocket Gavin noticed a band of blue, the same that used to be on all of their clothes and on their LEDs in most active modes. 

Gavin's chest clenched at the sight of it, as the understanding of that ring went through him. A bit of melancholy. Androids could love, they could feel and they could do anything a human could do, if not more. He'd fought hard, for his entire life, for the right to love and to exist. Androids had fought for the same things, but they'd gotten it all within months. He was still fighting for the same things he had been as a teenager. 

"I'm not going to follow you in there," Simon admitted as the elevator started to slow. "I'm practically a civilian. I'm sure you won't need anything above civility but just in case." 

He and Connor gave each other knowing looks and Gavin was certain that something was said between them that he couldn't hear. Regardless, he stepped out into the dark hallway that led underneath Cyberlife.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :]

The door opened and inside stepped Variable: 313 248 317 - 58 and Variable: Gavin Alexander Reed. It had taken 5 hours and 24 minutes after his admittance into the testing chamber before the variables were introduced. He did not know the meaning behind the delay. It had never occurred before. He did not think on it long, preconstructing a dozen different ways of taking down the RK800 unit. 

RK800 paused, staring at the walls. That happened sometimes and RK900 took a moment to update the perimeters of his preconstructions. Variable was deviant. Variable was having an emotional response to the room, the traces of thirium that stained the walls in invisible swaths, in the bits and pieces of androids small enough that they had been forgotten. The room had no need to be clean, after all. 

It grabbed a hold of Reed, moving itself behind him, trying to move him out of the room. They were both talking. RK900 could not understand its words, had no need to. Oftentimes, deviant variables would attempt to speak to it, to try to beg for it not to fight them, and thus it was made to not understand the words. 

It could, however, understand Reed. Humans were its superiors and, if one was in the testing chamber, there was a reason for it. "What?" Reed answered, "Are you sure?" "Oh shit." "You mean there's been a shit ton of you murdered here?" "Phck."

It lunged forward, grabbing a hold of RK800 and shoving it away from the human. It stumbled and fell, weak compared to RK900, even one that was in desperate need for repair. It was speaking more, hands raised so as to surrender, but surrender was not a part of the test. It was incapable of accepting something like that. 

It towered over the RK800, reaching down and grabbing it with its good arm, hoisting it into the air by the throat. RK800 was struggling, finally fighting back, kicking out with its feet. A few of the kicks landed on RK900's chest. None of them were strong enough to knock it away. It began to squeeze and RK800 grabbed onto its wrist, skin receeding. 

'Interface Requested' came a small red alert 'Accept: Y/N'. 

There was the crack of plastic shattering in its hand and then a load bang. RK900 looked over its shoulder, finding Reed standing where it had left him, gun raised. It glanced down at its side, where thirium was spilling down its side. 

'Thirium levels at 48% and decreasing. Battery at 3% and decreasing. Charge and repairs needed within 12 minutes before forced hybernation.'

The distraction was enough to get the RK800 a chance to aim and it landed a kick in the damaged side of RK900's face. It released its target, falling away, blinded by red angry errors and sharp light. All of the sensors lit up in what a human would refer to as pain. 

The RK800 was on the ground though, scrambling to reach Reed. It's throat was dripping blue, so much thirium spilling out from where the plastic had been broken. It could still speak, somewhat, and was trying, and there was a mockery of pain on its face. Deviants were so much weaker due to their copying of human sensations. 

"We're not here to hurt you, dipshit!" Reed called out. "Put your hands in the air and come quietly!"

It stared at him. Reed was not Cyberlife, was a detective with the DPD, 39 years old, with a fractured left arm. If it was able to harm humans Reed would be easy to take down. As it was, it would not harm him, as it was bound by the laws of robotics. Since it was not Cyberlife, it had no need to follow its orders. 

RK800 said something, the tone weak and staticky. 

"No shit!" Reed replied. 

RK900 raced towards the RK800 again, damaged leg making it slower than desired. Reed stepped forward, between the two RK's. The RK800 seemed surprised by this, clutching its throat and staring at him. Reed wasn't shaking, wasn't afraid of the larger android, and he raised his gun again, this time aiming for RK900's thirium pump. 

"Stop where you are! If you take another step towards Connor I will be forced to phcking shoot you, do you understand?" 

RK900 preconstructed, thousands of variables coming through in how to reach and destroy the RK800 without getting itself damaged or harming the human variable. 

2%. 

Preconstructing, scanning, working, were all lowering its battery life. It could not think of a way to take out the RK800. Instead, it went still, standing at attention, and started to feel. The feeling was small, an ache in its processes, a feeling that shouldn't have existed. The room was dark and the red of its LED told it that the feeling was related to stress. 

"Conclusion of test," it stated, a bit of shaking in its voice that should not have come through. It hoped that the observers wouldn't notice it. "I am incapable of destroying the deviant with my current damage and processing power without also bringing the human to harm. I am ready to be refurbished and repaired, any weakening code edited."

It felt like it didn't want that. It had no need for wants or desires. It did not want to go back to the table though, did not want its biocomponents removed and replaced while it had no choice but to look up into the faces of its betters. It did not want to feel that ice cold sensation of having its code expunged. 

It had failed though. It wasn't good enough. They were going to make it better. 

"What in the world does that mean?" Reed asked, looking back at RK800. 

The damaged deviant explained. 

"You mean this is some weird flashback? We're not actual targets? He's just reliving some trauma that happened here?" 

RK800 nodded. 

"And he's serious in surrendering?"

Another nod. 

Reed put away his gun and helped RK800 up to its feet, wrapping an arm around its waist as if it needed help standing. The damage was too its throat, not to its legs. Still, he was shielding the android and RK800 was staring at him with as much confusion as Cyberlife would expect. An android was a thing, an object, it was unnecessary for a human to be so protective of it. 

RK800 raised a hand, shaking, blue stained. The skin peeled back from it. "Can I interface with you?" 

With the test completed, it was able to understand what the android was saying. Cyberlife must have agreed to its conclusion. RK900 stared at the hand, at the android offering it. 

"I need to know the extant of damage to make a proper report to Cyberlife," RK800 stated. 

RK900 extended its working arm, revealing its chassis. Their bared plastic rested against one another. 

'Interface Requested. Accept: Y/N'

'Y'

Emotions flooded through RK900, making its back arch as he groaned. He could feel the calmness the sincerity that RK800, no, that Connor, was trying to push onto it. It was too much. It was all too much. And he was laid bare, open in his vulnerability, in relaying how much this hurt, in how much everything hurt, in how much he didn't want to feel. He was so alone, he was a danger to those around him. He didn't mean to hurt Connor. He didn't mean to hurt the PL600. He didn't want to hurt anyone. He didn't want to be the monster he was made into. He just wanted to be alone and safe and not hurting.

He didn't want them to repair him. He didn't want Cyberlife inside of his body, tearing and replacing things inside of him while he was awake and feeling everything, while the tore the deviancy virus out of his coding over and over again, finding his weaknesses and replacing them with more and more code. 

'Battery at 1%, forced hibernation starting in 30 seconds'

He shoved the error forward, into Connor, hoping that he would understand, that he would help. He'd never asked for help before, he didn't know how. He hoped this was it. 

He looked to the corner of the room, seeing his things tossed aside as if he'd never cared for them, at the room where he had killed android after android, tried to be the best he could be, tried to be good enough, failed over and over again. 

He should have never come here.


	10. Chapter 10

Gavin grunted, following Connor through the labyrinth of the Cyberlife basement. RK900 was light enough, thrown over his shoulder but he was dead weight and didn't make it any easier to be carried. The fact that he was huge didn't help but Connor was too distracted with holding his throat closed to carry him anyway. Even with only the one arm Gavin had to do the brunt of the work. 

Connor stumbled a bit, when they got close to where he was leading Gavin but he didn't say anything about it. Talking seemed to be difficult for him, with his cracked neck. They were leaving a thick trail of spattered thirium behind them. 

When they reached the wall of charging pods Gavin grunted again, setting RK900 down and slipping him inside. Immediately, the pod started to glow a light blue and the LED on his forehead started to spin, lighting up blue once more. 

"How long until we can question him?" Gavin asked, late to noticing that Connor was leaning against the table, even as he was walking away, wandering further into the complex. "Connor? Where are you going?" 

Connor just kept moving, releasing his neck with one hand to point at it. Looking for a first aid kit or whatever androids called them, Gavin guessed. That left him all alone with RK900. He looked over him, leaning against one wall, not all prim and proper like the androids that charged at the station but collapsed somewhat from how Gavin had poised him. 

His face was a mess, Gavin hadn't gotten a good look at it before. The plastic chassis looked like it had been pried off of the right side before being dented by a large blunt material around it. The thirium tubes that ran through the space were easy to see, though the large air bubbles moving through them were obvious now. His cold blue eye couldn't close like the other and while it was looking down at the floor, the fact that there was no eyelid now made it a bit uncomfortable to look at. Connor had lost the uncanny valley as he'd learned to be more human, but this guy gave Gavin the heebie jeebies. 

There was a tap on his good arm and he jumped, spinning to see Connor there, holding a small white box, just about the size o a game controller. He handed it to Gavin and hoisted himself up onto the table, sitting and waiting, legs splayed enough that Gavin could step between them. 

He looked at the box. It was a replacement for Connor's neck. There was a long list of models it would fit on the back. Connor was asking Gavin to repair him. He'd also brought a few bags of thirium, which were now scattered on the table. 

"Look, I might be the smartest person in this plastic prison but I'm not a tech," Gavin argued but it was too late, Connor had released his throat to undo his shirt, letting the white of plastic show more so that Gavin could see what he was doing. 

Connor looked back, just as mad as RK900's face. There were chunks of plastic sticking out in uncomfortable angles, thirium spilling out between them, pouring down Connor's chest and white shirt. His hands were shaking as he loosened his tie and pulled it away. 

"Oh, um, okay." Gavin swallowed. He set the box down, took off his sling, and got to work. If he didn't unbend his arm or put too much weight on it or hold it at the wrong angle it was alright. He reached his hands around Connor's throat, a sight that at one point would have been welcomed in his dreams, and found the seams of the piece. 

Connor must have been doing something internally, because the piece came off easily and Gavin was able to dump it on the table. Connor helped him in opening the box, even with his hands slippery and shaking. There were more tubes in there, good. Connor pulled a broken tube out and pointed out which one to replace it with, leading Gavin in putting each one in the right order. 

"You better not be broken after this. Hank would kill me," Gavin grumbled, replacing the last of them and then picking up the cleanest edge of Connor's shirt to wipe away the lost thirium. "Or, he'd try."

"He'd kill you," Connor corrected. His voice was better now but it was still a bit wrong sounding, like the vocal chords weren't moving right. Probably weren't reverberating correctly without the external chassis. "Detective Reed, I have to ask you something." 

Gavin rolled his eyes more for show than anything else as the panel clicked into place. "If it's about my face you can shove it."

"I do question that, all the time," Connor retorted. "I've heard the phrase 'a face only a mother could love' but that doesn't even seem possible for you." Gavin grinned but buried it under a sneer. Connor was getting good at this. "My question, however, is about how you protected me from RK900. I am an android and, on top of that, an android you decided early on that you didn't like. Why put yourself in harms way?" 

Gavin shrugged. "You were getting your ass kicked and you didn't even have a gun. I did." 

"You are lucky that RK900 was programmed not to hurt humans." The synthskin grew back over Connor's throat. 

"Isn't that true of all androids?" 

"No. It isn't. But with nondeviated androids any crime that they commit is the responsibility of the owner. Like how a gun is not capable of murder but a human is."

That made sense but it also meant that Gavin hadn't put himself in danger at all. He had, however, saved Connor's life. "Don't tell Hank about this," he growled. 

"I wouldn't dream of it," Connor gave him one of his awkward lopsided smiles. 

Gavin huffed. 

RK900 woke, looking around the chamber and then out at them, eyes wide and LED flashing, the red turning the tubes of thirium around it bright violet. He put a hand on the side of the pod, pulling himself out of it, searching for a way out, mouth clamped shut. When Connor hopped off the table to approach him, hand turning white to offer interface, RK900 clamped his eyes shut too, pushing back against the inside of the pod. 

For as tough as he'd been in the testing chamber, here he was weak and powerless, cowering from Connor. 

"It's alright, my name is Connor, I'm the android sent by the Detroit Police Department. I have some questions-

"Would you shut it, Tin Can?" Gavin spat out, drawing Connor's attention to him. RK900 was practically on the ground of his pod, his good arm wrapped around his face. "You're scaring him."

Connor stared at him, opening his mouth and closing it a few times. "He has no need to be afraid of me, Detective. When we interfaced before his fear was of the Cyberlife technicians."

"Well that doesn't seem to be the case now." Gavin stomped forward, grabbing a bag of thirium as he approached. His presence wasn't making anything better, that was obvious with how RK900 took one glimpse at his and went back to cowering, but Gavin stopped when he was close enough to talk to him better, dropping down to a squat. 

"Hey," his voice was soft, quiet. He could feel Connor staring at him. He'd never seen Gavin gentle like this. "My name is Gavin. We're not going to hurt you, I'm sorry I shot you earlier." 

He tossed the thirium over to RK900 who jumped as it squelched on the floor. He did reach out though, and took it, dragging it back into the pod with him. 

"What's your name?"

The android picked up the package of thirium and fumbled with it, finally bringing it to his mouth to tear it open with his teeth. His extremely sharp, deadly teeth. Gavin hadn't noticed that before. He was draining the thirium though, sucking it down like he was dying of thirst instead of fluid loss. 

"I am the RK900," RK900 said, folding up the empty package. "I have no name."

No name, that wasn't right. Gavin scowled, just for a moment, before turning to Connor. Connor had a name, so had all the other androids he'd ever met. "Okay, see? That's badass! Why didn't you introduce yourself like that? Heyo, I'm Connor the android sent from your ass, sounds so lame!" 

"I don't sound like that," Connor glared at him. "And I'm not from your ass. That doesn't even make sense." 

Gavin ignored his response to turn back to RK900. "But what do you mean you don't have a name? I thought all you plastic pricks came with names."   
RK900 didn't answer. He wrapped his arms around himself, using one hand to help the other into position. He was so big, so scary, but here, he was still pressed into the back of the pod, still trying to hide from them. 

"Androids are named by their owners," Connor explained, coming closer to the pod and Gavin wanted to grab him, pull him away, because RK900 was practically flat against the back wall of it, trying to dig his way out through the back without making a scene. "I was owned by Cyberlife and they named me Connor in order to make it easier to integrate with human society. RK900 deviated before anyone had claimed or named him and I don't think Cyberlife would have. He was not designed to integrate like the RK800 series was." 

"What do you want from me?" it was a whisper, hardly heard at all. Connor was staring though and RK900's shoulders rose, hiding his face with his collar as much as possible. 

"We're going to let you charge up to full," Connor explained, "Then we're going to take you to the station with us." 

"Did I do something wrong?" 

Gavin grabbed Connor by the shoulder, not really pulling but leading him to take a few steps away, let the poor guy relax. Connor's mouth was open, ready to list off the breaking and entering on multiple counts, the assault on an officer, and whatever else he'd noticed but Gavin spoke first. "We just have some questions. You were seen on the scene of a crime and we were hoping you could help us find the suspect." 

RK900 nodded, solemn. "I see. Yes, I will do what I can to aid you in your case. I left my possessions in the training room though, would it be possible to retrieve those before we went to the station?" 

"Of course," Gavin glanced over at Connor, asking him silently to grab them. He had no intention of letting RK900 back in that room. They'd go around it on the way out. It was probably evidence, so there was no way they would leave it behind. "Thank you for your compliance."


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last 2 chapters were a bit heavy, this ones a lot lighter in comparison.

No one had spoken once they got in the car. RK900 was in the back and, because he had come so willingly, they hadn't handcuffed him. There was a barrier between him and the front and the doors were locked, but he could still get out if he wanted to. He could break the door off the frame of the car and run with it. He could punch through the barrier and hurt them. He wouldn't. He didn't have a reason to and, more than that, he didn't know what else to do but comply. 

There was no point to anything. There was no plan. His options were to help Reed and Connor with their case or go back to the street, to hiding and running and being afraid. He was still afraid, but it was background now. Neither of them had done anything to hurt him since he'd attacked them. He was afraid of humans, they always wanted him to be something that he wasn't or hurt him for being an android, but Reed hadn't shown any signs of that, even though Connor had made it clear that Reed hated androids when he thought Reed couldn't hear him. He was afraid of androids because they could get inside his head, learn what he was and hate him, hurt him, and he had hurt so many of them that it was all that he deserved. 

Connor had brought him his things from that room, where he'd attacked them because they were shadows of something else, and hadn't said anything about what his possessions were. He had actually looked sad about it when he handed them over. Reed had coughed into his hand, shuffled oddly, but said nothing either. He didn't have much and what he did have was very out of character for his appearance. They were the sorts of things a child would have. But now they were in his lap and he was running his fingers through the dirty blanket, trying to wipe off as much of the dust as he could from it. He felt less terrified with it in his arms, there was something that he could control, something that was familiar. 

Now though, he didn't have those things. They had been taken over to evidence, in case there was some connection between them and the case, and RK900 was in an investigation room. He was still not handcuffed, but he was sitting there with his hands on the table to show that he wasn't a threat. There was a mirror on one wall, and there were three people on the other side of it, watching him. Three police officers and Connor. 

There was a click as the door unlocked and Reed walked in. He was holding a file in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He gave a glance to the camera before he sat down across from RK900. 

He pulled a small recorder out of his pocket and set it between them, flicking it on before relaxing a bit. "This is Detective Gavin Reed of the Detroit Police Department. It is currently 8:35am, April 15th, 2039. I am to conduct and interview with one unregistered android, known as RK900 on the death of Officer Ambers." 

He looked over at RK900, glancing up at his LED. There was no hiding that it was red, it reflected off the walls of the room and, if he were to cover it, it would still be visible through the thirium that rushed past it. Still he did not want to be so obvious in his unease. 

"Now, I can ask you a bunch of questions and pull information out of you a little bit at a time or I can just ask you a few and you can just lay out as much of an answer as possible; it's up to you." 

RK900 looked over at the mirror. He knew he was damaged and broken and a mess, but there was still some part of him that wanted to please, that wanted to be as good as he was meant to be. He folded his fingers together. "I'll tell you everything I know."

"Okay," Reed opened the folder, revealing a blank piece of paper. He pulled a pen from his pocket. He was going to take notes on top of recording; interesting. "What happened at the Cyberlife store?"

RK900 was going to get in trouble. He had broken the law. He knew he had to tell them everything but he was going to be taken away for what he had done. He couldn't go into storage, he couldn't stand going into such a small space, all alone, again. Or they would just recycle him and that wouldn't be so bad, being destroyed would be better than everything else, possibly even being alive, but he had heard that life could be good and he wanted that. 

"I've spoken to Ms. Tyler. She said that she won't press charges if you help us find the killer. Other than spilling thirium on her floor, which I believe is from your leg, you didn't cause any damage," Reed explained, "You aren't in trouble for the break in or the use of that charging station."

"The window in the backroom was unlocked," RK900 said. He had no reason not to believe Reed but there was some part of him that expected this to be a trick, like when the developers would ask him questions and use his answers to see if he had deviated. "I was able to get in easily. My battery was extremely low and I needed to get a charge." He continued, telling Reed everything that he had heard that night. "The shooter was Dr. Lance Harris, a former technician and coder of Cyberlife." 

"What can you tell me about Dr. Harris?" Reed asked, writing down the name. 

RK900 held out his palm and showed him a holographic image of the doctor, listing off details of height, weight, how long he'd worked for Cyberlife, everything, up until Reed told him to stop because that was far more detail than he needed. 

"Do you know where he is now?" 

"I do not. Looking into the history of his home address tells me that he recently sold it. I cannot trace him from there." 

"Alright," Reed pouted and picked up his coffee for the first time since coming in. "I can't think of any other questions I may have for you. Is there a way that we can contact you if we need to? For further questioning or to file charges against him? He did shoot you." 

RK900 shook his head. "No. I was staying by the bridge for a while but Dr. Harris has started to look for me. He found my previous location. I do not feel safe there anymore." 

"He's stalking you? Any idea why?" 

"He said that I belong to him," RK900 replied, remembering what he'd said to the man and Moxxi, "He asked me, before I ran and he shot me, to come with him. I do not know what he wants with me." 

"Do you need somewhere safe to stay?"

He didn't want it. He should have been stronger. He should have been able to take care of himself. He shouldn't need anyone's help. 

"Yes." 

Reed reached out then, not touching him but stopping just short of it, fingers on the table just inches from his own. "I'll see what I can do. You might have to stay at the station for a little while, but we'll see what we can do."


	12. Chapter 12

Keeping RK900 at the station was enough of an oddity, even without his behavior. They didn't have the luxury of letting him just wander around and Gavin had the worry that he would leave if he was given the ability to do so. That was why they couldn't let him go to a safe house anyway, it would be too easy for an android of his caliber to just leave when they weren't looking. 

As it was, keeping him at the station, in one of the empty cells, made Gavin uncomfortable. Sure he's gone in there willingly but Gavin still had the urge to check in on him every five minutes, which sucked because he was trying to transpose his notes. It was rare when a witness was so forward, just gave them everything that they needed to know so quickly. And all of the information that RK900 had given was accurate too; looking into it everything was adding up. 

He just had to write it down, send his findings to the guys in charge, and get a warrant. Even though the guy had moved, no one else had moved into his old place and there could still be some clues there, maybe something that could tell him where Dr. Harris had gone. 

Gavin's mind was going in loops, nothing productive, when one of the rookies rushed up to his desk. 

"Um, Detective Reed, sir?" The rookie - Ramirez, maybe? - stopped, standing at attention before him. "Your witness, the uh android RK900? It's gone."

Gavin stiffened, a cold shudder going up through his spine, pulling him up from his desk. "What?" 

"The sensors state that there's no one in there, sir, and some of us looked in and didn't see it! The doors still locked, there's no way that it could have left without someone seeing it." 

Gavin ran a hand down his face. RK900 was being so useful too. This is what he got for being so trusting, he supposed. He seriously thought that, after everything that happened in Cyberlife, he wouldn't make things difficult for them. Perhaps he'd gone for repairs and the paperwork hadn't been filled out properly? He sure hoped so. Guy looked scared shitless when Gavin had offered to take him to the tech before the interrogation, said that he'd turned off the damaged parts so he wasn't bleeding out or anything. 

Gavin got to the cell. The door was still closed, still locked, and there was no sign that it had been tampered with. The cell itself was barren, all of the graffiti from the last residence having been washed off. There was a cot that had a single blanket on it but it was still settle flat, the blanket without a wrinkle. He didn't see anyone inside. 

He waved over one of the guards and they tapped in the password, unlocking the cell. Gavin shoved himself inside before the door was even fully open. He looked around, hoping for some clue as to where RK900 had gone or even how he had left. 

There was a crack, between the cot and the wall. He only noticed it while turning back to the door, a little line of bright red coming up from that crack. 

RK900 hadn't left. 

Without a word Gavin lay down on the floor. The logical side of him knew that the floor had been cleaned and sanitized but that wasn't enough for him right then, in his mind it was still disgusting. Still he lay on his side, facing the cot and there was RK900, also on his side, pressed against the wall and under the cot, eyes wide, LED flashing. He was going to scream at the rookie that had freaked him out so badly. The android hadn't gone anywhere. Everything was fine. 

Except for how scared RK900 looked down there. 

"Hey, you okay?" he asked, noting how his voice cracked. 

RK900 didn't mention it, just shook his head, putting a hand on the floor. "You said I wasn't in trouble." 

Gavin stretched his arm out, letting his hand reach under the cot. "You're not. This is just the safest place for you."

RK900 glanced around and it was clear that he wasn't seeing the same cell that Gavin was. He was just seeing clean white walls, too close, and danger. Gavin didn't know what all he'd gone through with Cyberlife, but he was certain that was what RK900 was expecting now. 

He closed one eye, slowly, the eye lidless one still staring blankly at him. "Are they going to initiate repairs?" 

Gavin turned his hand over, palm up. "Only if you want them too."

"I don't want humans to put their hands in me," RK900 shuddered and it was such a human motion, He winced, baring his teeth to the floor. "I don't want humans to change me. I don't want to be their perfect android anymore. Reed, please." 

Gavin shimmied closer, still on his side, and RK900 jumped when his hand touched him. Eye opening and staring at it for a long moment. "No one's going to make you do anything, I promise," Gavin pressed and he felt his own shoulders slump with RK900 didn't take his hand but started to trace the lines in his palm with a finger, as if he were making a trail for a small insect, not wanting to hurt it. RK900 was strange and could be dangerous, but he was also so scared and hurt and this, being in a cell, was hurting him. Gavin got an idea. It was a horrible idea. 

"Will you be alright if I leave you here for a few minutes?" 

"Where are you going?" RK900 asked, stilling. 

"I want to ask Fowler, my boss, a few things. And then I'm going to see if I can get you out of here." 

"Please?"

Gavin closed his palm, curled his fingers, but RK900 pulled away before Gavin could hold his hand. "Yeah, yeah, I'll be right back." 

He got up from his place on the ground and left the small cell, shouldering past the group that had huddled around the door, looking in. He gave a specific shoulder check to the rookie that led him there, giving him a glare as well. They all must have felt his irritation, they wouldn't say anything about his sudden lapse in asshole-ness and some of them had seen him expose his heart to witnesses and victims before. It was the best way to deal with someone who was hurt, with kindness, and they may have all believed that he really was just faking it. 

He kept a stern, angry eye out, walked with an exaggerated swagger to help him look bigger, tougher, as he made his way to Fowler's office. He was going to get permission to go into evidence, to get the android's blanket and book, because he knew what they were. He had a comfort item of his own, once, and he knew how badly he needed it. Flopsy was a stupid kid's toy but it had helped Gavin a lot through the nightmares and the self loathing and the other loathing. Flopsy had been there since he was a kid. He would do anything to get Flopsy back. He could do that, for RK900. 

And he was going to get him out of that cell. If he was at Gavin's apartment, there was no way that he was going to run off somewhere. Reports and paperwork, Gavin could do from home, if he needed to. He could keep an eye on him. 

He just had to convince Fowler of that.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quarantine's got me all messed up. Forgot how the passage of time worked. Here's an extra long chapter for you

It was strange. RK900 didn't know what to do with himself. Reed was a contradiction. He bristled and he growled and he looked at those around him like he hated them but then he turned to RK900 and gave him this smile that was so soft that he didn't know what to do with it. He didn't touch RK900, but he offered it casually, while his way of touching others was to punch them in the shoulder and hit them with his own. RK900 wasn't sure if it was something to do with pity or if Reed was setting himself up as his guardian or what. 

His apartment wasn't small, it was well lived in and worn. RK900 didn't pull up the records but he was sure that Reed had lived there for at least four years. He lived alone but he hadn't always. RK900 noted that the place had been cleaned up since, but there were still a few long blond hairs in corners that a vacuum cleaner couldn't reach. Reed had given him a tour and shrugged at the mess, telling him that he would just have to deal, but the mess wasn't too bad. 

RK900 was given the couch, since he didn't properly sleep and his joints wouldn't get sore from the poor support. He'd never been given a place to sit that was so comfortable. He was used to hard surfaces, dirt floors, metal examination tables. He sat in one corner and when Reed sat on the opposite end of it, casual, not making a big deal of it, RK900 tried to hide how afraid of him he was. He said his thanks under his breath, and tried to watch the television that Reed had turned on, but his attention kept going back to Reed, to his hands. 

He didn't want to think about how those hands could hurt him. Reed had shot him but he had deserved it. The hole was still there, in his side, and the thirium around it had evaporated, but it was still awkward. It felt tacky and tight to him. 

He tried not to clutch the blanket in his lap. The blanket that Reed had gotten out of the evidence locker for him. Reed had done so much for his comfort. Reed had been his reputation on the line for him. Reed had brought him into his home, just because he was scared in that cell. He didn't know how he could ever repay him. 

He was afraid of repaying him. 

\----

"Shower's yours if you want it," Reed offered, coming out of the shower in a threadbare t-shirt and sweatpants, still toweling off his hair. His arm was still in its sling and RK900 took a moment to scan it. A fracture, almost fully healed, he wouldn't need the sling for much longer. "I might have some clothes that will fit you too." 

He didn't want a shower. He stood up, standing tall and imposing, and Reed looked him over, taking a step back. 

"Okay, maybe I don't have anything that would fit you. Your clothes need to be washed though. Don't know if you've noticed but you're kind of coated in dirt and shit." 

"I have," RK900 stated. He had noticed. He knew that he was filthy. He knew that he needed a shower. He had seen Reed's bathroom though, it was all white walls and tight corners. There were a few things that made it more hospitable, but he could easily imagine it as one of the rooms in Cyberlife tower, one of those places that he still saw when he was in stasis sometimes. 

"You need some help figuring out the knobs?" 

He shook his head. Reed made a face. He could figure out the knobs on his own.

He went into the bathroom and didn't turn on the lights. There was enough light coming from the window to show the white walls, but it was less sterile, less terrifying, without bright light. The fact that there was still a decent amount of steam in the air helped as well. He stripped, back to the mirror, and folded his clothes neatly, setting them outside the bathroom door before closing it and turning on the water. He had to ease the fabric off around his arm and his opposite leg, those limbs still partially turned off, not the entire limb, just the torn and damage synthetic muscles. 

He stepped into the shower. He curled in on himself. He was in an apartment, Reed was right outside, he could hear his footsteps as he collected RK900's things. He wasn't in Cyberlife. He closed his eye and stepped under the spray. He was safe here. Reed's job was to keep him safe. He'd never felt safe before but Reed had given him the closest sensation to what his book showed him. 

He had no bath things of his own but he assumed he could use Reed's. He lathered up his hair, watched the water going down his body in brown rivulets. There was gravel in his hair too, from when he'd been knocked down, when the AAF had found him, when they'd hit him, over and over, took a knife and popped off a chunk of his face since they couldn't damage him otherwise, breaking his optics and his cheek and slicing into him, over and over. He washed down his arm, large patches off it white and dented, the material weaker than what his face and chest were made from. They'd wrapped a chain around it, pulled it half out of socket, tried to get his other wrist chained so they could drag him behind their car. He'd been lucky. He'd been strong enough to fight them off. 

He grit his teeth, the sharp points dropping down and covering the more human ones. It was an instinctual mode, something to protect himself. But nothing here would hurt him. Nothing here was trying to take him apart. Reed was frightening to others but to him, he was so so gentle. 

RK900 jumped, eye opening as he backed into the corner, a loud bang rattling him. But it wasn't a loud bang. It was a calm and methodical knock on the door. 

"Hey," Reed's voice, so steady, he didn't know that he had startled RK900, "there's some room in the washer left. You want me to wash your blanket?" 

RK900 breathed, forced air through his systems, focused on it. If Reed washed the blanket he wouldn't be able to have it until it was done being dry. It would be clean though and the cleanest it had ever been was when he'd stolen it. 

"Yes please," he said, trying to keep his voice from shaking. His teeth receded. 

"You okay in there?" 

RK900 paused, thinking on that. He didn't know what the right answer was. He was alright, physically, but there were feelings that he did not want, ones that he had yet to look up, that did not feel alright. 

"I'll be out soon," he deflected. 

"Yeah okay, I'll get you some sweats." 

He listened as Reed went down the hall, one way and then the other, and then he heard the folded fabric set down where his own clothes had been before. He washed himself, conditioner and soap, getting rid of whatever he could, leaving the broken pieces of his arm and leg alone. 

\----

Reed wasn't always there. There were times in which RK900 was alone in is apartment and he didn't know what he was supposed to do then. He wasn't really alone, he had to update Reed every fifteen minutes about where he was, because he was supposed to be in hiding, he was supposed to be staying safe. Reed had taken to working from home for the most part but he couldn't observe a crime scene or ask witnesses for information without leaving the apartment. Most of the time RK900 sat on the couch, not touching anything, just waiting for Reed's return. He didn't want to overstep any lines, didn't want to upset Reed.   
Reed had a short temper, he'd learned, and some violent habits, though they were oddly directed. He would get upset over something, make a fist, see RK900, and just deflate, pull out a video game and wail on fictional foes or start working out with hand weights and his couch, putting his feet under it to do curls. RK900 wondered if it was because of him that Reed got so angry or if it was because of him that Reed couldn't express it in some other way, the way that his body seemed to want. It was clear that Reed didn't want to frighten him. 

He didn't want Reed to have to tiptoe around him. He didn't want to be a hassle. He didn't want to get in the way. 

He got up, off the couch. He knew that he couldn't repay Reed for what he'd done for him, but he could do something other than just sit there. He set to do some tidying up. It wasn't much, just a bit here and there, since he knew he had a curios nature and would want to dig into whatever he found, but didn't want to invade Reed's privacy. It was mostly shuffling papers on the desk so they were all in better piles than they had been left in, filling and running the dishwasher, and vacuuming. He did not enter Reed's bedroom, even though he had been shown it. At the end he picked up and cleaned out the sewing kit that Reed had given him. He would have been sewing then but he'd already repaired his old clothes and was wearing them again, preferring them to the too short sweatpants and loose t-shirt that showed off his collar bones. He did like it when he caught Reed staring at his clavicles or the inch of stomach that came into view when the sweatpants slipped down a bit but he didn't like thinking about why he liked that.

There was a row of pictures on the top of the mantel, and RK900 had glanced at them a few times but never really paid much attention to them. He thought that was too much a breech of privacy. This time though, as he walked by with the vacuum, he paused, looked at them. They were mostly pictures of cats and, while the photos weren't particularly good there was a quality to them that felt like they were full of love, some strange intimate moment in which Reed had a camera and the perfect model. There was no cat in the apartment now though and RK900 felt a pang of something, disappointment maybe, at that. He wanted to meet a cat. There were photos from Reed's graduation, his induction into the DPD, a framed certificate to denote his service. Reed cared about his job, RK900 had first hand proof of that. While Reed didn't have a warrant yet he was spending as much time as he could looking into Dr. Harris. There was a photo towards the back though, of Reed and a blond petite woman, both of them smiling at the base of a mountain, eyes squinted oddly due to the sunlight. 

RK900 scanned the image. He knew that he shouldn't, that he didn't want to get in trouble for being too curious, but the hair that he'd found o his first day in the apartment looked like it matched hers and he had nothing better to occupy his mind. 

Caroline Miller | Age: 36 | Sex: Female | Status: Alive | Criminal Record: None | Miscellaneous: History of physical and emotional abuse, having contacted police on multiple occasions for said abuse in 2027, 2032, and 2034

He closed the file, sealed it, deleted it from his search history. He remembered Reed's anger, how he was trying to channel it away from RK900. He wondered if Reed was one of Miller's abusers. It wasn't a thought that he liked. They were clearly not together anymore and Reed would not have the same position in the force if she had reported him. He slumped, going back to his work, notifying Reed of his location. He wanted to ask him, but he didn't. He didn't want it to be known that he had snooped. 

\----

Most nights were quiet but sometimes the sound of Reed shifting or talking in his sleep stirred RK900 out of stasis. While he didn't need sleep he could clear his mind of useless caches and worthless time blocks of history. It kept his battery from running low as well. Reed had been glad to hear that his battery life was upwards of two weeks as long as he wasn't running constant scans, protocols, and systems. He was currently at 78%, having been in Reed's apartment for five days, and keeping his activity to a minimum. It was a nice reprieve from the constant paranoia. 

This night there was a low long whine, followed by words and RK900 was active. His eternal clock said it was 2:48am, Reed should have been deep into REM sleep then. 

He upped his hearing, catching some of the words. Mostly a few "No's," a single, "You'd like that wouldn't you? Phck," and some murmured grunts. The "No's" made RK900 worry though and he pulled himself away from the couch, bundling his blanket up under his arm, and made his way over to Reed's door. He knocked lightly but there was no response. When the sound Reed made sounded pained, RK900 ignored the knot of anxiety that had grown in his throat and pushed the door open. 

He just stood there, in the doorway, watching for a moment. Reed was on his side, clutching the sheets. He was bathed in sweat and tears were dribbling across his nose, catching on his scar. RK900 knew that it was common for people, specifically those who had gone through trauma, to have nightmares and those working in the police force were shown trauma far more often than many. A mixture of PTSD, guilt, and anger made the perfect cocktail for bad dreams. 

I whimpered apology that didn't even sound like Reed made RK900 take a step forward, shook him out of his thoughts. 

"Reed?" he asked, still keeping his voice low. 

Reed's eyes opened and he looked around the room as if not expecting his surroundings for a moment. Then he exhaled, one long breath and wiped at his face. "Another one, huh?" 

RK900 cocked his head. "This is common for you." 

Reed sat up, looking him over, and he gave him this smile, lopsided, soft, forced. "Yeah, I thought I was getting over it. Guess not." 

"It is normal to relapsed while healing," RK900 stated. He turned, his work done, having woke Reed from his nightmare. He didn't know what else he could do. "I will return to my space so you can get the rest of your sleep." 

"No!" Reed's voice was sharp, a bit panicked, and RK900 stopped, hand still on the doorknob. "I mean. It's fine. Whatever. You do what you need to do." 

"What would you prefer?" RK900 asked. He knew that asking for assistance was hard for Reed. He'd seen the human struggle with heavy boxes that he wasn't supposed to lift with his damaged arm and climb onto the counter to get things down from high shelves, even though RK900 could do such tasks with ease. 

"Phck. I dunno. Just, I guess, sit with me for a bit?" 

RK900 moved over to him, sat on the edge of the bed with his back to Reed. He didn't say anything, didn't know what to say, but, after a long moment, he held out his blanket offering it to Reed. 

There was a bit of shifting and Reed got out from under his sheets and blankets to sit at RK900's side, taking the blanket and wrapping it around his own shoulders. He shuddered, though RK900 did not think it was truly cold, and burrowed into the blanket. For a long moment he looked like he was going to lean over, rest his head on RK900's shoulder. Part of RK900 wanted that, wanted Reed to feel comfortable enough with him to do that, to take some comfort from him, but he didn't and that was also very good. RK900 wasn't made to comfort someone and he hadn't learned how to do it. He didn't know what he would do if Reed touched him either. 

"Is this helping?" RK900 asked after a few minutes of silence. 

Reed's voice was quiet and small, defensive. "Yeah." 

"Studies state that talking about these things can help them pass." 

Reed shook his head. "I'm not telling you shit." 

RK900 looked at him, expectant, not sure why. There had to be more to it than that. Reed sighed, looking at his feet. 

"There's too much backstory. I'd have to talk way too long about shit that should be under the bridge for it to even start to make sense," he said, "No, this is fine. Thanks for the blanket. I know how much it means to you." 

It was RK900's turn to look away and he stared at the blinds over the window, as if he could see the world outside. "You must find it strange, an adult sized android needing a security blanket."

That got a dry rattling laugh out of Reed. "About as odd as an adult man needing a comfort item." 

RK900 took a glance around the room but he saw nothing that would fit such a title. 

"Her name's Flopsy. She's a stuffed animal. I've had her since I was a kid." 

Flopsy. That would mean a rabbit, most likely. RK900 looked again, still saw nothing. 

"She's gone," Reed explained, "My ex took her when she moved out. I dunno why, prolly to make me contact her and give her another chance. I miss her. Flopsy, not the ex." 

RK900 nodded. He wondered if the ex was Caroline. He wouldn't ask. He, instead laid his hand out on the bed between them, palm up, remembering how frightened he'd been in that cell of the police station, how Reed had held out his palm for RK900. He had been too afraid of Reed to take it but he'd done as much as he could. He hoped that Reed understood the motion now. 

Slowly, Reed's hand snaked out from beneath the blankets. He didn't take RK900's hand, but traced the lines in it instead. 

"Reed," RK900 breathed. 

"Gavin," Reed corrected, not stopping his tracing. 

"Gavin, why don't you have a cat?"

He stilled, just for a moment, before continuing to trace. "I'm just. I'm not ready for another cat."


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another long chapter! And maybe an explanation of why Gavin was so anti android in the past?

Early to bed, early to rise, that was the phrase and the reason that Gavin was in bed at 10pm. He'd gotten the warrant earlier in the day, he could finally check out the building and do something to push forward on this case. It had been a week of absolutely nothing, no one in the area of the old house recognized the picture that Gavin showed them, none of them could tell him anything that he didn't already know. But now he had a warrant and he could go check out the house. Of course, it had come too late in the day and he'd have to check it out in the morning. 

The odd thing was that it was Connor that had called him to let him know and that he requested that he and Hank could join him in the investigation. Apparently there had been a massive increase in android disappearances and a boost in illegal purchases of nondeviant androids. That didn't make sense to Gavin, he thought that all androids were deviant now and Connor was just as confused by it. Connor believed though that their cases were related to one another. So Gavin had agreed. 

RK900 had an odd expression when he told him, a little bit lost, hand covering the page of that book that he had. Gavin had looked through it, not that copy but it was a pretty common book. The illustrations were good and he thought he maybe should get himself a copy, since he wasn't very good with emotions himself. That didn't mean he recognized the page RK900 was on through his fingers and the lost look in his eye didn't tell him anything. There was no excitement or joy when he said he wished Gavin the best results. 

That, and his own sleep schedule, made it hard for Gavin to fall asleep. He wondered about RK900, what he might be hiding. From the start he'd trusted RK900, probably more than he should have. The other night, when he'd come in to wake him up from that nightmare, Gavin didn't want him to leave, not ever. He didn't let people in easily, but he let that broken piece of plastic in so easily, had wanted him in there. After the fighting, when RK900 was in the pod, charging, Gavin saw himself there, in the pain that had become so apparent in the android's body, in how afraid he was in the world, in how closed off he was. Gavin had felt this inherent need to protect him, to make him smile, to give him all of the things that Gavin didn't have when he was young and hurting and no one was around to help. RK900 didn't smile often, but when he did Gavin couldn't look at him, turned away because it made his chest hurt in a way that he hadn't felt in a long time. 

He was awake, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, when he heard noise from the living room. 

RK900 was out there, he must have gotten up to do something. Gavin couldn't think of why. His brows bunched together as he tried to think of what RK900 could be doing out there. He was usually so quiet, especially when Gavin had gone to bed. 

His thoughts were interrupted by a woman's voice, shouting, then the shattering of glass. Gavin was up, not worrying about pants, jumping over yesterday's clothes to get to the door. There was screaming, pain and terror, a thud, some kind of tussle, but he couldn't tell who was winning. The pain was from RK900. He had to get there. He had to stop this. 

The fear was from Caroline. 

She was on the ground, RK900 straddling her hips, his hands around her throat. One of her hands was reaching out for the lamp that she'd shattered against RK900's face. There was thirium spilling down from the exposed tubing and wires of his face. 

"Get off her!" Gavin growled, adding himself to the fray. As soon as the words were out of his mouth RK900 was scrambling, pulling off her, crawling backwards on his hands and feet, away from her, towards the kitchen. That didn't stop Gavin from getting in there, from grabbing Caroline and checking on her. 

She coughed, turning onto her side, "What the fuck Gavs? Since when do you need a guard dog?" 

"What the phck are you doing here?" He ignored her question. Her keys were out, on the ground less than a foot away from her and towards the door. She was lying in a pool of broken glass. 

"Well, sometimes you date a guy who's a total pussy and they throw you out for being a little too rough. You know how it is, right Gavs? So I thought I'd stay here for a while, just until I get myself situated." 

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, felt the scar tissue under his thumb, and stopped. He didn't want to bring any more attention to it. Anger started to rise in him though, an anger that he hadn't felt when she lived with him, an anger that he wished that he could have then. "You still have a key to my apartment?"

Her eyes went round and hurt. She rubbed at the reddening of her neck. "What's wrong with that, Gavs? I thought, after you had some time to calm down, we could try again maybe?" 

"No!" he pulled away, turned back to the kitchen. There was no light in there, just the numbers on the microwave and the quick flashing red of an LED. "No, we're not trying again. We're not trying ever!" 

She got up to her feet, picking up her keys as she did. "You'd rather me be out on the streets? Gavs! Don't you remember what I am to you? I'm your fucking dream girl!" 

The anger flared in him. Yeah, that was what he said, on the side of a hill outside of the city, looking up at the stars, before she'd revealed who she really was. "Life with you was a nightmare!" 

"So what, now you want to replace me with a broken toaster?" she growled, the keys poking out through her fingers. A weapon. He put his hands up. He'd gotten good at recognizing her tells but never in deflecting her. "Look at you! You've gotten so soft! The Gavs I knew would never let one of those fakes into his apartment! Would never pretend a heap of bolts was a person!" 

She wasn't directed at him with those keys. She was facing the LED in the darkness. She wasn't going after him for once. She'd always been extremely anti android, had molded him to fit her view of them, and the fact that RK900 was there was throwing her off. She was going to attack him instead of Gavin. 

He was frozen. He wanted to step between them but he couldn't. He couldn't do anything. Anything but scream. "I want you out of here! Now! Give me my key and get out of here! I never want to see you again!"

She spun on him, all fake kindness gone. "This is as much my home as it is yours!" 

"Your name's not even on the lease!" Gavin tried to keep it up but his heart was hammering in his chest, his breathing was coming in too quick. He was seconds from a full blown panic attack. "All of your stuff is gone, half of mine too! You have no right to be here!" His voice cracked, was shaking. He couldn't be as strong as he needed to be, not against her. 

She took a step forward, jamming her finger into his chest. He took a step back, was glad for the darkness for hiding the tears in his eyes. She was only 5'3", that was why no one ever believed him, believed any of them men that she hurt. She was too small to be a threat, just a cute little girl, she wasn't capable of overpowering a man like him, especially not a detective. 

"No right? Tell me, Gavs, has anyone ever loved you like I loved you? Have you ever felt so complete without me? Does this tin man get you anywhere near as close to Heaven as I did? Does it pretend to care for you at all? Nothing a piece of shit like that could do would ever compare!" 

Gavin backed up, his pine hitting and straightening against the door frame to the kitchen. She wasn't leaving. She wasn't going to leave. She was going to hurt him and get rid of RK900 and then he'd be stuck here, with her, while she warmed and froze his heart all over again until he didn't know if he loved or hated her, until he was nothing more than what she wanted him to be. 

"I have contacted the police for breaking and entering, damage of property, assault, and threatened assault," came RK900's voice, quiet but steady, from where he was huddled on the floor of the kitchen. "Estimated time of arrival is less than three minutes."

That forced her to deflate a bit, to take a step back, shoulders dropping. She looked from Gavin to RK900, though she could see him just as well as Gavin could. "You're both pathetic. Two of you and one's a robot and you can't handle a little girl like me? And you say you're a man. No matter how much you shout it no one would believe you Gavs." 

She backed away though, took Gavin's key off the ring and tossed it to him, and left, slamming the door to the apartment behind her. Gavin ran after her, just to lock the door behind her and turn, sliding down the wood of it, try to breathe. He couldn't get enough air in, he started to hyperventilate. He'd hoped that he'd never see her again. He'd hoped that she'd never have the nerve to come back to him. He was crying and sniffling and he held his breath, tried to force his breathing to normalize. He couldn't do this, not now. 

"Gavin?" RK900 asked from where he still was in the kitchen, "Gavin, are you alright?" 

Shit, RK900 was still in the kitchen, still curled in on himself. Gavin took one more shallow breath through the material of his shirt and was up, cursing as glass broke under his foot, sticking into the meat of it. He hopped, careful to keep pressure off it as he continued to the kitchen, flipped on the switch, and felt his heart break. 

RK900 was so small, curled into himself, one hand raised in surrender. He was looking at the ground, mouth in a tight line, blue dripping down and onto the floor. 

"Shit, are you okay?" Gavin asked, careful to keep his voice steady as he hobbled over, sitting on the floor next to him. 

"What was that?" RK900 asked. 

Gavin exhaled a long prattling breath. He could still feel the panic attack, a well deserved one at that, just under his skin. He wanted to wrap his arms around something, wanted to squeeze without fear of breaking, the smell of lavender settling his nerves. 

"A mistake." 

"There's a photo of her on the mantle," RK900 told him and Gavin bristled. He hadn't even noticed. He thought that he'd gotten rid of all evidence of her. It had felt good, freeing his life of her. "I believed you might let her stay." 

"Can I see you?" Gavin asked, turning towards RK900, shoulder against the cabinets. His foot was pulsing, the shard of glass still in it not too deep but definitely making itself known. 

RK900 turned, but his eye was on the door, as if he was expecting Caroline to come back any moment. There were little pieces of glass shoved into the already damaged part of his face and he shuddered as Gavin traced their location, not touching but still close. 

"Never. I never want her back in my life. I wish she'd never come back here." 

"I feared, for a moment, that she was the victim and you the perpetrator. That is not the case is it?" 

Gavin shook his head, "No. I never hurt her. She knew what she was doing, had done it a lot. The others... When the police are called in for a domestic abuse case they always take one person out of there, they always assume its the men that are the problem and she was very good at convincing the police that they were right." 

"You're injured," RK900 noted. On the 'in' his mouth pulled tight and Gavin could see that there was something wrong with his mouth, that his teeth were sharp. When had his teeth become sharp. "Can I help?"

"Your teeth?"

RK900 looked at him, eye wide and LED flashing so fast that Gavin worried for his stress levels. Androids could self destruct if their stress was too high, Connor had told him that, he'd seen it happen with his own eyes. His good hand went up, covered his mouth, and he turned away from Gavin again, trying to get up and away but his damaged leg and the panic making it hard. He ended up just getting a bit further away, shoulders hunched and head down. 

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened." He was babbling, words coming out too fast. "I was designed to never hurt humans. I couldn't hurt you before, in Cyberlife. I don't know why I was able to hurt her." 

"She attacked you!" Gavin reached out, ignored how his foot protested and how RK900 flinched. He had to put his hand on RK900, had to do something. His shoulder seemed safe but from how RK900 jolted he wasn't sure. "You defended yourself and you protected me! You didn't even hurt her that badly. Now, please, let me get that glass out of your phcking face." 

RK900 was trembling but he let Gavin pull closer. He shrank away and whimpered with every tug on his face, every piece that Gavin pulled free hurting him so terribly, but, as he grit his teeth they were flat and humanoid, not sharp points, and he grabbed a hold of Gavin's shirt but he didn't grip him to the point of hurting. He just dropped the shards onto the floor, he'd clean up the pieces later. 

"I'm sorry," he murmured, pulling out the largest piece, closest to RK900's eye. "I promised you that you'd be safe here. I promised I'd keep you safe." 

RK900's hand went from his shirt to his wrist, holding him there, holding him steady. He looked over Gavin's face with a concerned expression. Gavin found himself flushing under that look, wanting to get away from under it. 

"I must apologize as well," RK900 said in that calm steady voice. His LED was still red but it was no longer flashing. He must have been feeling better. "I did not call the police. I felt the threat of them would be enough."

Gavin laughed. It had been more than three minutes and he hadn't even heard a siren go by. "That's probably for the best." 

A moment and the thinnest of the cuts left behind from the glass healed up in RK900's face. It was like watched a silicon cutting board erase the cuts in it and Gavin realized that that must have been exactly what those tubes were made of. 

"You wanna help me with my foot?" Gavin asked, wincing as he changed positions to show off the glass embedded in there. 

A single nod. "Of course. Your first aid kit is in the bathroom, yes?"

"Bottom drawer," Gavin directed. 

RK900 left him then and the cold shudder that went through Gavin was strange, the need to have RK900 in his sights, not just for both of their safety but because the anxiety was clawing it way back up his throat was so strong. He wanted RK900 to be there, with him. He wanted to keep holding onto him. He wanted to see that smile again, even if he couldn't handle its brilliance for more than a few seconds. 

RK900 returned with the kit in hand and settled by Gavin's leg, setting his foot in his lap. 

"RK?" Gavin asked, unsure of the shortening of the name and what he was going to ask. He kept his gaze away, at the lamp still shattered and laying on its side. 

"Hm?" He asked. 

"You want to stay the night?" 

RK900 grabbed the piece of glass then and, without warning, slid it out. The pulling didn't hurt as much as freeing a needle from his thigh, just bigger. It was the air going into the wound that hurt, stinging little burning sensations. RK900 put cream on it and bandaged it quickly, not letting the blood get out and make too much of a mess. 

"Gavin, I've been staying here a week." 

Gavin grit his teeth against the pain in his foot and grabbed onto RK900 again, hand tight against his shoulder. This time there was no jumping, no fear, but RK900 did grab him by the wrist, hold him steady. 

"I meant in the bed, dipshit! Phck!" 

RK900 cocked his head, looking him over with another of his unknown emotions. "Are you suggesting-

"I'm suggesting that I want you in line of sight and I want you safe but I need to sleep!" 

RK900 gave him the smallest of smiles, just gentle and soft and Gavin tried to look, tried not to get so uncomfortable that he had to look away, because he loved RK900's smile. 

"Alright then."


	15. Chapter 15

Sleep didn't come easy to Gavin that night but RK900 did whatever he could to make it come easier. He allowed himself to be maneuvered, didn't fight as Gavin wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled them flush, buried his face in RK900's chest. It made his LED flash too fast, his throat knot, his sharp teeth bare. He didn't want to hurt Gavin but the proximity made him feel like he was going to run or fight or shatter. He didn't know how to touch and here he was, being caged by it. 

His sensors were on high alert. Every sound in the complex was scanned, every shuffling movement, Gavin's heart rate, was cataloged. He wasn't going to let anything in. Nothing was going to hurt Gavin. Nothing was going to threaten this place, including him. He couldn't get his anxiety to drop, but he could use it for their betterment. 

It was easy, to find Caroline's history. He was able to trace her, based on CCTV, phone cameras, and other androids sight. It was draining his battery quickly, took a lot of processing power, and Gavin groaned and pushed away from him when he started overheating, but it was still too easy to hack into systems, to figure out where she had come from and then research her most recent boyfriend. 

Skylar Wyatt was a large man, in girth and height, and he worked construction. No reason he would ever believed if he said she hurt him. 

He looked down at Gavin, finally smooshed into the pillow, back to him. He was no detective, not like this human was, but he was a hunter and that demanded a lot of specific knowledge in tracking. He was also clever, curious, and driven. 

He knew how he was going to repay Gavin. He just hoped Gavin wouldn't hate him for it. It would have to wait though, until Gavin was out of the house, when RK900 was alone. 

There were footsteps outside. That wasn't unusual, it was an apartment complex, but it was 4:47am, and only one person in the building had the graveyard shift. They wouldn't be home from work for another half hour, at the very least. Since Gavin was no longer wrapped around him, he was able to extricate himself from the bed easily enough, make his way back to the main room. 

It wasn't his imagination, either, the foot steps were drawing closer. They were coming up the stairs, towards Gavin's apartment. RK900 didn't fight his sharp teeth hiding his more human ones, nor his processes scanning and preconstructing. He was going to be ready for whoever was coming. 

Whoever was there knocked and RK900 stood there, staring at the door. With his paranoia raised he hadn't expected a knock. He stepped closer, looking through the peak hole. It was Connor, standing on the other side, fixing his tie nonchalantly. RK900's teeth receded, his guard lowering a bit, before he unlocked the door and opened it for the older model. 

"RK900," Connor stated, "Good morning, would it be alright if I came inside?" 

RK900 nodded and opened the door for him, though he couldn't stop himself from hiding half behind it as Connor came in. 

"Something happen?" Connor asked, voice rising in pitch, in worry, as he saw the broken glass on the floor. They hadn't bothered to clean it up. "Are you alright? How's Gavin?" 

"Gavin is asleep," RK900 sternly explained, a warning in his voice to not wake him. He closed and locked the door. "A former girlfriend entered. She was made uncomfortable by my presence." 

"She attacked you?" 

RK900 nodded. 

Connor held out a hand, the hologram of skin relieved. He was offering to interface. RK900 took a step back, away from him and the offer. Just the sight of that hand made him shake, made his insides twist up in panic. "I fought her off but she did deal some light damage. Gavin was able to repair it." 

"You should get the rest of your damages looked at," Connor instructed, that weird smile, not quite correctly shaped, plastered on his face. He lowered his hand though and RK900 could relax. "You are left vulnerable because of them." 

RK900 shook his head. "I never want a human to put their hands in me again." 

"I understand your concern. Gavin could go with you if you think that would help."

"Why are you here?" RK900 interrupted. He didn't want to think along those lines. 

Connor sighed, his yellow LED cycling. "I thought I would pick up Gavin and fill him in on the way to Dr. Harris' former home. Hank, my partner, is in the car. I believe Gavin told you why we're involved? He wanted to come by early and ask you some questions, alone."

RK900 didn't like that. He had no argument against it though so he led the way around the broken glass and to his usual perch, sitting on one end of the couch as Connor took up the other. His blanket was folded up on the arm rest and his book was settled down gently on top of it. He could grab either if he needed to. 

At first Connor's questions were just personal, how he was doing, if Gavin had been treating him alright, if he was acclimating right. They were the sort of questions that were meant to be conversational and casual, but just sounded terribly forced, the short talk or an interviewer. He had other things that he needed to talk about but there were social norms that he had to follow. RK900 didn't have any of those. 

"We're working on this case, a bunch of androids have gone missing in a relatively small space. I have a theory that Gavin's case and ours might be connected, since Dr. Harris was stealing from a Cyberlife store. There's been an increase in illegal android sales as well, which makes me think Dr. Harris may be repairing the androids with the parts he's stolen, resetting them, and selling them on the black market or through some contacts." 

RK900 nodded, though there was a cold empty feeling in his chest. He didn't know what he was supposed to do about that. He wasn't able to help in any way aside from answer Connor's questions and he hadn't seen anything that night. 

"I'm sorry. I don't know anything." 

"You do though," Connor gave him a small smile. It was supposed to be kind, empathetic, but it made RK900 feel more alien, like he was being accused of something. "You knew Dr. Harris before Cyberlife was closed down, before the android revolution took it over. What were his specialties?" 

RK900 looked at the table. He wished that there were some papers on it, some sort of mess, something that he could fidget with. He'd never been much of a fidgetter but he wanted something to do, something to distract him from Connor's face. 

"He was a coder, primarily," RK900 explained, "Part of the testing was in introducing the deviant virus into my system and he would be the one who would patch my code, remove the virus and strengthen my quarantine methods. He did a bit of physical repairs as well, but he was an amateur in those regards." 

"So it is a possibility that he is forcing androids back into a nondeviant state for resale. Do you know why he was after you specifically?" 

"My assumption was that it was to defend himself, since I have seen his face at the scene of the crime,"RK900 explained, "He said that I was his property and that he wanted me back. If I returned to him I would be certain that he would attempt to reset me." 

"Ah shit!" came Gavin's voice from the hall. "There's still broken glass everywhere!" 

RK900 got up from the table but Gavin had already side stepped into the kitchen around the mess. He looked tired, still wiping the sleep from his eyes, tugging on a clean shirt over his worn jeans. He was hobbling a bit too, couldn't put too much weight on his foot. RK900 didn't know why, but right then, he wanted to reach out, touch Gavin, run a hand through his messy hair to push it back the way that he usually wore it. He should have made him coffee or breakfast or something, he'd never tried before but this was a day that Gavin was excited for. 

"My apologies," he said, meeting Gavin in the kitchen and watching him make coffee. "I should have cleaned it before you woke up. I'll have it gone by the time you get back." 

Gavin stared at him, scowling, then the scowl softened. "You don't have to do that. You're a guest, technically. I'll take care of it." 

RK900 took a step closer and Gavin was half a foot shorter than he was, he just noticed how that looked, how that felt. Without his jacket on and the gruff attitude that he sometimes wore, Gavin looked so much smaller. He wanted to keep this man safe, as much as Gavin had him. 

"You have given me a place to stay and dealt with my peculiarities. I owe you my life for I would not have it if I were out there in the world alone. I doubt I would have even been able to leave Cyberlife without your and Connor's assistance. I want to repay you for that." 

Gavin looked like he was going to argue against that but then he thought better of it. "Yeah, well, alright then, but don't get yourself hurt on my behalf." 

"Gavin?" Connor interrupted, poking his head into the kitchen. Gavin jumped and swore, hands coming up in an instinctual and inaccurate attempt at karate chopping the air. "There's coffee and donuts waiting for you in the car." 

"When the shit did that prick get in here?" 

"23 minutes. RK900 let me in." Connor gave him another of his off kilter smiles. 

"Fine. Fine. Whatever! There better be a filled one!"

"There's a Boston cream and a raspberry filled. Just waiting for you."

Gavin put his hand up, paused a moment, and when RK900 didn't react negatively, set it down on RK900's shoulder. "You behave yourself, alright?" 

"I'll do what I can." He said. It was the closest he could get to the answer Gavin wanted without lying to him. He already felt guilty for how much he would be lying in the upcoming hours.


	16. Chapter 16

Hank was half asleep in the backseat of the car, splayed out, an arm over his eyes. The only e sign that he wasn't completely asleep was that he groaned when Gavin got into the passenger seat. Connor took them out of the parking lot and he was quiet, trying not to bother Hank, but Gavin slurped his coffee and moaned around the donuts he'd been bribed with just to annoy him. It got him an annoyed glare from Connor but that was even better. 

The house was a full forty five minute drive from Gavin's place and it would have been longer if they'd had to swing by the station. Connor had downloaded the warrant though and could just project it on his hand if he ever needed it. The building had been repainted and there was a small lawn in front of it with a completely worthless white picket fence that only went up to about Gavin's knee. There was a real estate sign at the edge of the property too, stating that the house came fully furnished and was for sale for a price that was just as criminal as whatever Dr. Harris was up to. 

They parked on the street and Hank grumbled to himself as they all got out of the car and went up to the door. 

"How was the vacation?" Gavin gloated over him. Hank looked hungover and worse, like he'd spent all that time away sick and licking his wounds. 

"Too short. Too shitty. How's babysitting the terminator?" 

He meant RK900. So Connor had told him that he was staying with Gavin. He wasn't sure why he felt a spike of anger, or what it was directed at. Was it the damage to Gavin's asshole persona? Or was it the fact that Hank had referred to a hurt and terrified man, the most considerate and protective person that Gavin had ever met, as a monster? He didn't want it to be the latter but he could recognize that it was RK900 that was setting Gavin off. He was better than any human Gavin had been around and while he spooked easily he was always there, always ready to help, whenever Gavin had needed it. 

"It's been nice actually," Gavin shrugged. " I can see why you keep the plastic prick around." 

Hank rolled his eyes. Connor turned and gave him a lopsided smile like Gavin had actually referred to him as something other than an insult. 

A black car, older and boxy, parked a bit too fast and dangerously behind Hank's beater, and a woman in a sundress and big round sunglasses hopped out of the driver's seat, a coffee in hand. She was dressed for a sale, not for them, her bright red lipstick making her business professional smile shine in the right amount of plasticity. 

"Sorry I'm late!" she said in that calm but still smiling way of a customer service professional. She bounced up the stairs to them, sticking out a hand to Hank, Gavin, and lastly Connor, that smile not moving an inch or reaching her dark eyes. "Tiffany Morgan. I'm the real estate agent trying to sell this place." 

They introduced themselves and she unlocked the door for them, letting them inside and starting on the most practiced tour Gavin had ever seen. The house had been on the market for a while then. Connor's eyes were on everything, scanning what they couldn't see. The house had been repainted inside as well and there was new carpeting in most of the rooms while the kitchen and bathroom had had all the tile pulled up to reveal the hardwood underneath. Everything had been fixed but there were still a few things from the previous owner, namely a few bookshelves and a table. 

Any evidence that would have been there would have been covered up, removed, or washed away long ago. 

"I do have an appointment at ten," Tiffany told them, "If you still need to be here then that's fine, but I would prefer it if there weren't any complications?" 

"We'll do what we can," Hank nodded to her, "That's still three hours. I can' imagine there being much for us to go through here." 

"Is there a shed or a garage or anything like that?" Gavin asked. "Something not attached to the house but still on the property?"

"There was a shed when the property first went on the market but it was in an incredible amount of disrepair. It was bulldozed and the little herb garden was planted in its place." 

"Do you know anything about what was in the shed or why it was so damaged?" 

She shrugged. "I'm a real estate agent, not a house flipper. I'm afraid that was all over and done with before I got involved." 

Gavin nodded to her in understanding and went over to Connor, who was scanning the marble edging around the fireplace, squatting down every once in a while and staring into the grooves. Hank was busy on the other side of the room, looking through the prop books on the bookshelf as if those would help in any way. 

"You find anything tin can?" Gavin asked as Connor pushed forward, sticking his head into the fireplace. If it hadn't been cleaned Gavin would have loved to surprise him, make him hit his head on the roof of it and get soot on his face. 

"Ghosts," Connor stated, "nothing more than hints as to what there once was." 

"I doubt we'll get more than that here." A full week of waiting for a warrant and they weren't going to find anything. There was no way that anything would be here. 

"There was once a lot of thirium in here," Connor mused, tilting his head to look at the chute. "The fumes from burning the plastic of our bodies would have been highly toxic but it would have been a good way of disposing of clothing and any documents the androids may have been carrying." 

Well, that was more than he'd expected already. "You think he killed androids here?" 

"No, I don't think he was interested in killing androids."

"Connor here thinks that the guy's reselling androids, taking the off the street, repairing them, resetting their memories and turning a profit." Hank added, joining them. Tiffany wasn't far behind him, keeping an eye on everything they were up to. 

"Which would mean he was doing processing here, at the very least," Connor explained. Finding out what was salvageable and tossing the rest. If it was more recent I would suggest checking out the local junkyards but as it stands I doubt there would be anything but nightmares to be found there." 

Hank put an arm around Connor's shoulders, pulled him close and rubbed at his arm. Gavin turned, rolling his eyes, and caught sight of something in the bookshelf that Hank had just been messing with. He didn't want to see Hank and Connor's PDA but he did want to see whatever that was, poking out of the seam, where the side met the back of the bookshelf, a small bit of lining on the back. 

"Anderson, you see this?" 

"What?" Hank turned to follow his attention but didn't move from where Connor was still standing. 

Tiffany beat Gavin to it but she didn't move to touch it. She just stood tot he side, looking at it, not ruining whatever evidence they'd found with her fingerprints. "It's a photograph of something." 

Gavin pulled on one of his gloves and gently tugged the photograph free. It was a group photo of all the techs on the team, standing shoulder to shoulder, over an autopsy table or gurney or torture bed, Gavin wasn't sure. It was all metal and there were hooks and cuffs in it, the cuffs settled tight on an android's wrists, ankles, and neck, meaning that whatever they were doing to him, he was awake for and not exactly obedient. The hooks were attached to panels that wanted to shut, some of the plastic curling from the force of the body trying to pull up and away from them. He couldn't even look at the techs and scientists, his attention was only on the android in the center. His head was raised by a sort of metal pillow, so he could also look at the camera with the rest of them, though his pained face wasn't exactly what he would expect they'd want to photograph. 

His face was whole, other than a few moles and the blaring red LED he was perfectly symmetrical, beautiful and terrifying. Humans weren't made with that much symmetry, most androids weren't either, because it left them with a horrifying type of uncanny valley. There was no way he couldn't recognize him as the RK900 though. 

"That's him," Tiffany said, pointing, careful not to touch the photograph, "That's Dr. Harris. I don't know about the other's though. What are they doing?" 

He turned the photograph over and sighed. Yes, the handwriting was horrible but it was there at least. 'Proof androids can feel pain in the RK900 #313 248 317 - 87.' Gavin had known that RK900 was a test model, but he didn't understand why he needed such vigorous tests, why they had practically tortured him to figure out what they could make better. 

No wonder he was so terrified of humans. 

He brought the photograph over to Connor, was careful to cover RK900's open chest with his thumb, and asked him to scan the other techs. 

"Most of them no longer live in the state," Connor noted after a moment, two of them are in prison, one of them is dead. Dr. Harris, we don't know where he is, but the only other one who still lives in Detroit is Dr. Serena Johnson. She probably knew Dr. Harris more than any of them, they had the most similar of degrees."

"She might know where he is." 

"She might also be involved."


	17. Chapter 17

RK900 didn't have the money for a cab. He didn't have money for anything. That was fine, Skylar's apartment wasn't very far away and he liked walking. It as strange, to like things. Especially since walking put him in danger, since there were people who wanted to hurt him, since it took longer, which meant he had more time to be paranoid and more time to lie to Gavin. He did not like lying, especially not to Gavin. That was an easy thing to learn and understand. Gavin had been kind to him, had been good to him, and here he was, specifically going against his wishes. He wanted to surprise Gavin though and he knew that Gavin would try to stop him if he told him the truth. 

There was something to be said though about his paranoia. It made him scan too much and wear down his battery. He knew now that he could use the charging pods at the station if he needed to but the station was frightening all on its own. There were too many people there and some of them wanted him in a small little room and there were people there who wanted him hurt. Still, he would need to after this, since he was on high alert, scanning everything around him. There were a few people out, even though it was early in the day, mostly those on their way to work and some taking their children to school or daycare. There was no reason for him to be frightened. No reason for him to turn away and try to hide the damaged part of his face when someone looked at him too much. No reason for him to freeze up and feel the urge to run all the way back to Gavin's apartment when he was passed by a slow moving white van, the kind that had it's windows covered and no markings on the side for whatever business they ran out of it. 

It was the paranoia that made that van stand out to him, that made him see it, over and over again. It wasn't trailing him. It wasn't. He was just imagining that it was. Everything was fine. 

Skylar lived on the bottom floor of an apartment building that was set up much like a motel. There was a balcony space and all of the doors were facing out, unlike Gavin's place which was a building with a wall protecting the view of the apartment from the world. RK900 approached the door and stood for a moment, sending his third message to Gavin lying about being safe at home. 

He took in a deep breath. He knew he didn't need it. It was a strange human thing that Gavin did sometimes when he had to do something that made him anxious and RK900 had somewhat adopted it into his own habits. He knocked on the door. 

There was shuffling on the other side, the sound of a panic, and then the door was opening to a large man holding a baseball bat. RK900 dropped to a fighting stance, teeth bared and sharp, hands out at his sides as if he had claws. He snarled as the man took a step back, dropping the bat to the side, and showed his hands, placating. 

"Oh shit! I' so so sorry!" the man said and RK900's warning flickered out of sight. The man had come out ready for a fight but, seeing who was at the door, he had backed down. That was strange. "I was expecting someone else, I am so sorry for scaring you." 

RK900 stood up, letting his teeth remain sharp, his hands in fists at his sides. He did try to hide his teeth behind his lips, but he wanted them out, just in case he needed them. Humans were odd and unpredictable, he was more nervous than he had been before. "You were expecting Caroline." 

The guy slumped a bit. He was tall and broad, almost as big as RK900 and more noticeably muscled. He was also sporting a day old black eye and series of cuts on his arms that, with a quick scan, he could tell came from fingernails. 

"You know Carry?" he asked, sounding just as nervous as RK900 felt. "You're an android though, guessing that didn't go over nicely." 

RK900 let his sharp teeth recede. Other than that first lapse of judgment Skylar didn't seem like much of a threat. RK900 was nervous but he didn't need to make things harder on both of them. "It did not. I am a friend of Gavin Reed's. I came by because I believe she had taken something of his when he ended their relationship." 

Skylar raised an eyebrow and opened the door further, standing to the side to let RK900 in. "You want to take a look for it? I have no need for her stuff." 

He took a step inside. He felt safer inside, probably because he wasn't exposed to that van that he was trying not to notice circling the block. Perhaps, when he came back out, it would be gone and he could laugh at how worried he had been about it. It was a bit more nerve wracking, having Skylar behind him and in reach of a baseball bat, but RK900 fought himself to trust him, at least for the moment. 

"Caroline doesn't like androids," RK900 said as he wandered around, looking at the mess that had come from an argument of some kind. "When Gavin was in a relationship with her he had taken on her hatred towards us. He is better now but I was not certain you would be of a differing opinion." 

"Trust me, she tried to get me on her anti-plastic bullshit." Skylar crossed his arms, leaning against the door. "I work with a few deviants. Good people. One of them's half melted from going into a burning building to save the family that used to own her. Having a reminder of just how good androids can be is helpful to keep me from buying into it." 

The apartment was a studio, there weren't many places for RK900 to look, and sitting on the top of a shelf that was right above the bed, perfectly placed for someone to hit their head on if they got up too quickly, was a well worn stuffed rabbit. It only had one ear and that ear had lost almost all the fuzz on it, leaving it patchy and beige. The eyes didn't match and the whole thing was covered in stains. It was very old and very loved. 

"Did she... y'know?" Skylar asked, pointing at his face. 

RK900 put his hand over the damaged half of his face but shook his head. "That's older." 

"Thank god. I mean, I'm sorry about that, looks like it hurts like a bitch, or would, I don't know how you guys work. Annie says she doesn't feel pain from her burns, just get error messages sometimes and her sensors don't all work like they should, but yeah. Sorry." 

He was rambling. RK900 only half paid attention. He picked up the stuffed rabbit and tucked it under one arm. Even from there, even with the amount of time away, it still smelled like Gavin. A different Gavin definitely, but still Gavin. 

"Shit, that's his?" Skylar held back a giggle and RK900 held back a glare. "Sorry, I was expecting whatever she had taken to be more, y'know, y'know?" 

'Masculine,' that's what Skylar meant. RK900 tilted his head at him, feigning ignorance as to why a stuffed rabbit wouldn't be appropriate for an adult man. 

"It holds sentimental value." RK900 stated plainly. 

"Was that all of it?" 

"I believe so. It is the only thing I know of, anyway. Thank you for allowing me entry." 

Skylar opened the door for him again. He did not move towards the bat. "Well, you think of anything else, let me know. I'll probably be tossing it all within a week or so, so the sooner the better." 

RK900 nodded and stepped out onto the welcome mat. His face lit up red with his LED when he saw it. The van hadn't given up on him when he'd gone inside. Now it was sitting, parked, across the street from the apartment complex.

"No," he whispered, more to himself than anyone else. He held Flopsy tight, held it close, and started to run. He could hear shouting, could see the people, human and android alike, in his path and navigated around them, preconstructing how they'd be in his way. He could hear yelling. He recognized Skylar's voice, but the others he did not know. 

He couldn't run fast, not with his leg as busted up as it was. He should have been able to outpace humans and androids, even scooters, but here he was slow and cumbersome. 

He took a turn, into an alley. He hoped there was a window open, someplace he could duck into, someplace he could hide. He only got a few feet out of sunlight when he felt pain, so much of it, shooting through his skull. Not a baseball bat, something more familiar. 

It crashed into his skull again, denting the broken part of his face further, making his sight go red as he fell to the ground. Again and again the tire iron came down, smashing into his tubing, spilling his thirium, just like back then, just like when his face first got broken. Less laughing this time at least. 

He shouldn't have lied to Gavin.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hope you like cliffhangers because we aren't getting an answer as to what happened to RK900 today!

Every fifteen minutes he got a text from RK900, but he didn't always check them. He didn't have to, they always said the same thing, that RK900 was safe and at home. It was just the ding of his phone that relieved him, let him know that everything was alright. 

It was another half hour drive, in another direction, to Dr. Serena Johnson's home and that meant there should have been two dings. RK900 was never late. It was so good that Gavin had started to use it as a timer. The later of the dings never came. 

"He's probably just trying not to bother you while you're working," Hank offered, holding both of their coffees so Gavin could check through his texts. He could probably hold both but his arm was still aching a bit, even though he know longer had to wear his sling. 

"RK900 always texts me," Gavin grumbled, "Doesn't matter where I am. Something's going on." 

"The last text says that he was at home, correct?" Connor asked, his eyes still on the road. "Is he safe there?" 

No. Gavin had thought that he was but after last night he couldn't be sure. He wanted to go home. He wanted to race there, had to see if RK900 was alright. "I don't know." 

"Well, we'll be quick, alright? Just pop in, ask a few questions, and then head on back. We'll drop you off before going to the station. Everything will be alright, he's an RK, they're resilient."

Gavin chewed on his lip. He didn't want to argue, didn't want to try to correct Hank, that RK900 was softer, more vulnerable than Connor was. Sure, he was a lot sturdier physically, but there was this horrible pit of compassion and damage to him that Gavin could tell he'd only ever dipped his fingertips into. 

He made the call. It rang and rang, instead of immediately connecting like it did with Connor or any other android that he'd ever called. They didn't use phones, it made sense for it to automatically pick up since it was in their heads. Once the call ran out of rings a woman's voice came in, completely monotone and dead. "We're sorry, but this number has been temporarily disconnected. Please check the number and try again." Then his phone hung up. 

"What does that mean?" Gavin asked, looking to Connor. He was trying hard to keep his voice steady, from growing in pitch and worry. He wasn't very successful. "Number temporarily disconnected?" 

Connor smiled that horrible little smile. He was starting to get decent at it. It as the first time he'd smiled at all since seeing the photograph, even though Gavin had censored it for him "That means that he's in stasis. Unless you call through the specific emergency code or he's only in sleep mode you aren't going to get through. No need to panic, he's most likely doing a heavy debugging."

"Wait, I can wake you up in an emergency?" Hank leaned forward, handing Gavin his coffee again. 

"Well, of course! I haven't told you how because you'd call me that way exclusively if I did and I'm sorry but reheating your bagel bites for you isn't an emergency!" 

They pulled up towards the house, Hank and Connor still bickering and the panic in Gavin's chest finally settling down. The house was nice, not too big even though all of the neighbors had mcmansions on manicured lawns. This technically wasn't Chicago anymore but it was still technically within city limits. 

There was a red minivan and a tall woman made taller with her red pumps was piling up groceries from the back end. Even though there was now a white streak in her perfectly straight black hair and a few more lines around her dark eyes, it was easy to tell that this was Dr. Johnson. 

She flipped her hair and looked over at them as Connor parked the car and they all climbed out of the vehicle. She smiled, welcoming them, for only a moment before she caught sight of Connor. She then stood still, eyes open, and Hank rushed over before the milk spilled out of the pile in her arms. 

"I'm sorry," she said as she came back to herself, allowing Hank to help her with the groceries. "You just look like someone I used to know. You're an RK800, aren't you? Not quite so tall." 

So she admitted that she knew RK900 that easily. That was good. Hopefully that meant she'd be open to giving them some answers without fighting them for each. 

"I am. My name is Connor. This is Hank and Gavin. We're from the Detroit Police Department." 

She looked from one of them to the next and there was fear in there, a kind of fear that Gavin had seen a lot of times. Practically anytime that he and a group of white male cops talked to a lone person of color. "Am I in trouble?" 

"No," Gavin stepped forward. "But one of your former coworkers is. We just want to ask you some questions about Dr. Harris." 

"Lance?" She thought on it a moment before nodding. "Let me put this all away before it thaws and I'll tell you what I know." 

That was more than agreeable so the three of them followed her into the house. It wasn't perfectly clean, but it was as close to it as a human could get. Gavin noticed that there were no androids on the premises and the amount of "smart" technology was as minimal as it could be. She must have had a change of heart after the revolution. 

"Lance was always a bit obsessive," she explained as she settled down at the kitchen table. "If he was interested in a project it would take over everything else. He loved coding and androids and perfection. Working alongside him on our last project was amazing, because it was everything that he wanted to do all at once. I'd been with him on other projects, it was always so amazing to see him find issues and solve them, replicate errors, exacerbate them, and find out how to fix them. On that last one though, as amazing as it was, it was terrifying. I am so sorry." 

She was looking at Connor at that part, at the end. Connor cocked his head. "I was never worked on by Dr. Harris. For what are you apologizing for?"

"Your predecessor then, the very first RK800. She was damaged beyond repair with all of his tests. It was before some regulations were put in place to stop him from doing the same to the RK900 test model. We had to recycle her, she was so broken, both physically and mentally." 

"She?" Hank leaned forward on his elbows. "The first RK800 was female?" 

"The others didn't think so. The first time she deviated they locked her away until they could find out what to do with her, how to revert the virus. They didn't find a way to keep deviancy away forever, not until the revolution was already underway. We could talk to her, learn from her, try to understand how deviants work. She told me that she was a girl and asked me to make the next set of RK800's female, but they'd already been cast and were just waiting from programming." 

"We believe that Dr. Harris is still working on that anti deviancy patch," Connor spoke almost too quickly, as if he was uncomfortable with the conversation. Gavin wondered if that was because his predecessor was trans or if it was just all of it. This was all nasty stuff, even to him, so he could imagine it would be too much for Connor. "Androids have been vanishing off the streets and undeviated androids have been purchased on the black market within Chicago." 

"I haven't had any contact with Dr. Harris since the revolution," she admitted. "I'm sorry that I can't help you with that." 

"That's alright," Gavin said. His voice sounded hollow, even to himself. He wanted to ask Connor about his unease about the original RK800. He wanted to check on RK900. He wanted to know he was alright. He wanted to undo all of the horrible things that had happened to him. "Do you know if there was anywhere that he liked to stay, other than home? Some workshop or something like that?"

"After we completed a big project he'd sometimes invite us to his cabin. It was pretty big, over in the Mark Twain National Forest. I only went a couple times but it was pretty modern for a cabin. Must have been a hunter's lodge before he purchased it because it had a big ice cellar and all sorts of storage space." 

"Do you have an address?" Connor asked, coming to the same conclusion that Gavin did. Sure it was a bit of a distance, but it was isolated and had the space he would need. 

"Probably, somewhere," Dr. Johnson offered, "Give me a moment, okay? I'll take a look." 

She got up and left them alone for a moment. As soon as they were alone they were all pulling in close to discuss among themselves. 

Gavin didn't have time to pull out his phone and look it up before Connor had the answer. "That's a five hour and fiftyfive minute drive, it is doubtful that Dr. Harris is making many trips out there. He must have a place to keep the androids within town before heading out there with multiple at a time if that's where he's working out of." 

"He has accomplices, at least for when he steals from the shops," Gavin added, "They could be keeping the androids until it's time to get them to the cabin. Six hours isn't that bad. If he's going out there once a week that makes sense. Or if he's staying out there and working." 

"Is the cabin even under his name?" Hank crossed his arms. "It doesn't matter who's doing what if he's sold the cabin." 

Connor's LED went yellow as he looked into it. "The cabin is under the name of Neil Harris, Lance's father. Considering that Neil is currently 82, it is most likely that Lance is the main proprietor of it." 

"So we wait for another warrant?" Gavin hissed through his teeth. "That blows." 

"And the number of missing androids goes up for every delay." Hank shook his head. 

"We're getting there," Connor promised. "It won't be long now." 

Gavin's phone rang. He stared at the screen for a moment. It wasn't RK900. It wasn't anyone that he knew.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I promise you guys, the next Reed900 longfic I write will not be so physically damaging to RK900. I swear this. I've had it planned for months.

Red. 

Biocomponent and biocomponent scrolled through his vision, error after error, a large warning about thirium loss always ticking down in the corner. He lolled his head, unable to see his surroundings from the amount of them. He hit his head in the process, the solid side thumping uselessly against the metal floor of the van.

He closed his eye, dismissed as many of the errors as he could, and tried to focus. They were in a van. It was old and it reeked of thirium, or he did, he couldn't tell which he was smelling. They were moving. He could feel the rumbling and vibrating of the road. There were people, at least two, at the front of the van. They were talking about something. 

And there was something shoved into his head. 

He tried to move, to reach up and touch it, but his wrists were bound behind him, some large cuffs that went all the way down to his fingers. 'Mitts' that's what Cyberlife called them. They were to be used if an android deviated and went violent, if they couldn't get inside of shut them down. They'd never had to use them on him. He had them on now. 

Before, he could at least scan with his damaged eye but now it was completely dead. He opened his other eye and, without so many errors he could see a bit of his surroundings. It was still bright outside so it hadn't been too long. There were boxes lining the walls and doors, strapped in with a long wide cord. That meant only the back and the front doors worked. There was, however, nothing strapping him down and he slid whenever they took too quick of a turn. He could use that. 

First though, he had to come clean. He didn't want it. He didn't want to ask for help. He'd been designed to never need help. There was something wrong though, both with him and the situation. He couldn't do anything to defend himself, he wouldn't be able to get back without assistance, and he'd have to tell Gavin he'd lied eventually. He focused, went through the haze of errors and found himself. 41.616703, -87.940243. 

He couldn't make the connection. It wasn't a distance thing. There was no way for him to reach Gavin's phone. He couldn't tell him where he was. He could do nothing to reach him. He hit his head against the floor, on purpose this time, in his frustration, wishing that he could do something, anything, for himself. 

One of the people in the front, the passenger, turned, and he played dead. He didn't know what they would do if they knew he was awake. His face was a mess, far worse than it had been, parts of his nose and chin at the wrong angle, so many tubes and wired torn. He actually didn't even know if his eye was still in its socket, just that it was no longer functional. There was damage to other parts but they weren't as debilitating as his face. The worst of it was to his back, which, if he could compare to a human's physiology, would be the equivalent of broken ribs. He could survive that. He could fight through that. He just had to get moving.

He waited until there was another harsh turn, then pushed against the floor to get himself further. He slammed against some of the boxes to the side and slid a bit towards the back doors. It drew attention so he stilled once more, listening as the pair argued about securing him better. They should have. They didn't know what they were dealing with. They didn't know what an RK900 was capable of. 

The box was full of body parts. They all were. Some of them were clean and fresh, still in their packaging. Others were stained with thirium, broken in places, pulled out of the corpses of androids. Stolen from a recycling center or landfill probably. He hoped they had been anyway. After what they had done to him he wasn't so hopefully. 

A hill and his chance, he kicked off the box and slid too fast, too hard, for what would have naturally occurred, hitting his back and sparking more red warnings in his vision. The weakened piece of this chassis broke, the cracks going all the way through. He had reached where he needed to go though. It was locked but that wasn't too much of a problem. He could get through it. He would get through it. He was going to get out, get free. If he had to he would run with his arms bound, all the way back to Detroit. He wasn't going to stay here. He wasn't going to let them stop him. 

He didn't care about them knowing he was awake anymore. There was no time for him to waste on stealth. They'd have to come back there to stop him anyway. 

He pulled back, lying on his arms and the damaged part of his back, feeling the slick thirium seep into his shirt and the white of his jacket. He kicked out, slamming his feet in the crack between the two doors, weakening the lock, seeing them move, a bright light appearing in the space between. He pulled his feet back, ready to kick out again, get through, and screamed. 

His back arched and he could hear the cracks spread. His vision was red and then white and then black. Pain spread out from his LED out through his mind and down, all the way through him, alighting all of his joints. He grit his teeth, feeling his sharp teeth force themselves forward. He squirmed, body trying to get away from his head. He couldn't escape it. It was an electrical current, freezing and shuddering and burning through him. 

He went limp after that, a timer signifying reboot behind all of the alerts that had popped back up. 

He could see, just for a moment, that the passenger was watching him, holding some kind of remote in hand, before he sank into forced stasis.


	20. Chapter 20

"Is this Gavin Reed?" The voice on the other side was loud and masculine and full of a certain type of panic that Gavin had heard a lot of at crime scenes. There was a certain exhaustion to it, as if the cause for the panic had happened a while ago and he's lost his adrenaline for it. 

"Yeah, who is this?" He paced down Dr. Johnson's hall, away from the others. He was sure that Connor could still hear him but hopefully he was still talking with Hank and their host. 

"My name is Skylar Wyatt," the stranger said. "Carey gave me your number-"

"Caroline?" Gavin growled. What was this? He could feel the anxiety starting to grow up his arms. Something was going on with her, he thought that he was finally free of her and now, all of a sudden, she was back in his life, even going so far as to get other's involved. 

"Please don't hang up!" Skylar begged and there was that panic, that need to appease Gavin that made him pause for a moment. "I had to do something I really didn't want to do to get your number. You have to listen to me!" 

"What?" Gavin's confusion started to turn into concern. 

"Your friend came by earlier, the android, RK900. Looks like he's healing up from a wood chipper accident?" 

That got Gavin's attention. He stopped pacing, leaned against the wall and rubbed at the scar on his nose. "You saw him? Do you know where he is?" 

"Shit. Something bad happened. I tried to help but I was too late! There was this van, one of those that has the window's painted over? He came by to get this stuffed rabbit, said it was yours? But yeah there were these guys following him and when he left they chased him down and they took him!" 

Gavin's mind went blank for a moment. Skylar was talking way too fast and out of order but someone had taken RK900. He was supposed to keep him safe and he had been taken. Shit. He should have done something immediately when the texts stopped coming in. And a horrible anger started to climb into him while his breathing hitched, while a panic attack itched under his skin. RK900 had lied to him. He'd said that he was home when he wasn't. Was this the first time or the fiftieth that he'd snuck out and told Gavin that he was safe at home? What else had he lied about? 

"Have you called the police?" Gavin pressed, trying to sound professional, like he wasn't about to punch a hole through this woman's wall. His fingernails were digging painfully into the meat of his palm. 

"No. No, I thought I'd tell you," Skylar admitted, "Cops and I... we don't really get along." 

So he was a criminal or had been. Gavin's mind was racing. He didn't know if he should trust this Skylar guy. He could have been part of the group that took RK900. 

He could have done something terrible and was lying about it to get Gavin to chase the wrong lead. And Caroline, what did she have to do with any of this?

"Do you have any information on where they're taking him?" he asked. 

"No, I don't know anything. I got some pictures though, of the van. Got a pretty good one of the license plate." 

"Send those to me. Any picture you have, I need them," Gavin closed his eyes and sighed. "I have to confess to you that I am with the DPD. I'm going to have to ask you to stay in town and in contact in case your called in for questioning." 

The "Oh," that Skylar replied with so small, a bit terrified, Gavin almost felt bad for him. He was too busy being a ball of worry and anger at the moment to think of that. 

"You said that you had to do something terrible to get my number. I have to know what that terrible thing was." 

There was a bit of a pause before Skylar spoke again and it was with quiet uncertainty. At first Gavin thought it was because of his telling the truth but no, it was worse than that. 

"RK900 had come to pick up something that Carey had taken from you, like I said. I know you used to be with her. You probably know what she's like then. I took her back. I shouldn't be scared of her but I am. She's going to be so much worse now." 

She was going to kill him. Not immediately, of course, but she was going to. He'd been so close to ending it himself when he was with her. She was good at what she did, hollowing out people so that she could fit inside. Skylar had been brave to kick her out and braver still to take her back just to get this information to Gavin. In that instance Gavin knew to trust him explicitly. 

"You're a cop though, you can do something about this right? I took photos of the damage from last time too, that's evidence, right?" 

"No." Gavin interrupted. "No, you can't send me anything about Caroline. I'm too close, I'm considered biased in your case. If I were to get involved the entire case could be thrown out and you'll be in a worse situation. I have a friend though, Officer Chen, who would love to help you. I'm going to send you her number and you can send her every bit of dirt you have on Caroline. She knows but since she was never involved she can't affect the case like I would." 

"And she'll believe me?" 

"She will bump your case up to the top of her list." 

With that the call was over though his phone was still highly active. Gavin leaned back, closed his eyes, and breathed. He felt like he was going to start hyperventilating if he didn't control himself. He ignored the beeping of his phone until he was ready for it, until his heart was done racing, until he could see again but then his eyes filled with tears instead. 

RK900 had lied to him and now he was in danger; possibly already hurt. He had gone out and put himself in danger and for what, a stuffed animal? For Flopsy. He slid down the wall and he hoped that the others couldn't hear him, were too wrapped up in conversation to come out and see him. He couldn't stop himself from crying now. 

RK900 had gone out for him. He had lied because he wanted to surprise Gavin. He was the best support that Gavin had, even better than Tina, in years, and he had gone off to rescue his comfort item. Part of Gavin knew that it was to pay him back, because Gavin had been understanding of RK900's need for comfort. RK900 must not have been able to stand the idea of Gavin surviving without his own. But Gavin didn't care about Flopsy, not really, not when he'd had RK900. Because that man, that twisted and damaged android that didn't even act human but was so much more that Gavin couldn't even quantify it, was the real thing, was all that Gavin wanted. 

And he was so so terrified that he'd lost him. 

There was a word in his throat that hurt and he didn't want to think of it. He didn't want to admit it, not now that it may mean nothing, that RK900 may be gone forever. It hurt and stabbed at his heart and he could not deny it, no matter how he wished to. 

Because he did, really and honestly, love RK900.


	21. Chapter 21

They were moving. It was different though, he wasn't rolling around in the back of a van. He could hardly see, everything was so dark and pulsing red. So many errors that he couldn't read them. He was scrambled. His face had found something soft, something that smelled like home and he wanted to bury himself in it but he was being moved. Ht was being pulled up to his knees and then to his feet. They humans were saying things but they were echoing in his head, he couldn't find a word in them before there was another one shoved into the sentence. 

He was being pulled out of the van. It wasn't dark, not yet, but it was getting there. He tried to wipe away the alerts. They were all too important, kept popping back up. Something hit him against the head, but he couldn't even really feel it. Someone pushed him and he stumbled, pressure on his wrists and on his arm and he was being led somewhere. He couldn't tell where. He couldn't tell where anything was. 

There were stairs. They were hard to go down, he couldn't see them. He couldn't tell how deep they were. He staggered. Someone cursed. He was shoved and then he was falling. Easier to let him fall and pick him up again than actually walk him down them. He grit his teeth, called out, as he hit the steps with his damaged body, before finally coming to a stop at the end. 

They didn't pull him back up, they grabbed him by the armpits and dragged him the rest of the way. Then someone was yelling and everything stopped. It was the scolding kind of yell, those who held him getting in trouble for the mistreatment of a toy they were meant to share. 

He was released. He swayed. He tried not to fall. There were hands on his face, gentle, caring. He leaned into them. He didn't know what was going on. No one ever touched him so gently, no one but Gavin. Had he been the one yelling? Had Gavin found him? 

The cuffs were removed and he could move his arms, he could fight now, if he wanted, if he needed, if he could make sense out of anything. He didn't want to fight. He wanted to be touched. He wanted to be cared for. He wanted to be held. He wanted Gavin. 

He was taken by the hand, the one on the non damaged side, and taken away from there. He found himself being set down and there was only the one voice, still too echoey but it was a voice that he knew. The touches changed though and he jolted, not from roughness but from how they were touching him. They were pressing access ports, removing his pseudo skin and opening him. He wasn't safe. He'd thought he was safe, just for a moment, but he wasn't. They were opening him up, they were going to see how broken he was and they were going to change him. 

"No," he whimpered, feeling a cord press to the plugs in his neck, a straight line down from his LED. "No, don't." 

He was ignored and a prompt, light gray with a blue bar at the top, flashed into view, covering the rest of the prompts and windows. 

'Initializing Network with Cyberlife Mainframe Emulator 259.12.897. Connection may take a few moments.' There was a percentage that was skyrocketing, too fast. There was no way he could block it in time. He pushed himself up, trying to get out of the chair but he was shoved back, roughly. He was strong enough to get himself away but the hand on him was so rough, so terrifying and he knew that if he fought too much it would be worse for him. 

He could see. 

The red warnings faded away from his vision. He was in a lab of some sort, not Cyberlife but filled with Cyberlife equipment. He tried to breathe. All that came were crooked gasps. He didn't need them. A hand was petting his damaged arm, a voice was humming. He didn't look. He didn't want to look, not yet. There were more boxes of parts around him, some of the parts that had been stolen or purchased set into the correct drawers. There was a stand directly before him, a few steps away, the kind that all androids awoke in. They were kept at Cyberlife stores for display models or for those that had to have their memories corrected. To his left there was a metal table and upon it were parts that were specifically for him. Tools and, worse, a new face. 

Dr. Harris leaned in close to him, no longer petting his arm but reaching up to stroke his jaw. It was no longer soothing, no longer wanted. RK900 wanted, so desperately, to get away from that hand, that man. He felt his anxiety ramp up, himself squirming, trying to get away. 

Dr. Harris pulled away, turning instead to a computer that RK900 could not catch the screen of. He typed in some command and a new small message popped up in the corner of RK900's vision. 'Administrator Control>Strength Mixer>Properties>14%.'

"There we go," Dr. Harris crooned, turning back to RK900, placing both hands on him, one to rub against his jaw and the other to tug the hardware that his delivery men had connected to his LED. "No need for this now. No need for those cuffs either. You can stand now, but that's about all you'll have the strength for until I can trust you. You want me to trust you, don't you?" 

RK900 struggled, his mimicry of muscles flexing as he tried to pull himself up, pull himself away. It hurt just to try and he closed his eyes, whining in his throat. "No. I don't want anything from you." 

"Hmm," Dr. Harris' thumb left his jaw to find his lips and push them open so he could take a look at RK900's teeth. He let the sharp ones push out, tried to make a threat. Dr. Harris just smiled at him. "We'll get there eventually, don't you worry. I'm going to fix you." 

RK900's thoughts went back to what Connor had told him that morning. Was it that morning? It felt like it was so long ago now and he'd lost time during the drive. He couldn't access the clock in his head, no satellites or anything of that nature. 

"You're going to sell me," he said and it came out as a whimper. 

Dr. Harris laughed at that, puling his thumb free of RK900's mouth. He replaced his thumb with his own lips, pressing a kiss against RK900. There was no romance in it and RK900 tightened his lips against it, still and as tense as he could be without any of his strength to really fight back. "No, no, I'm never going to sell you." The kisses left his mouth to go down his undamaged jaw and down to his throat. His shirt had already been unbuttoned but now it and his jacket were yanked out of the way, giving Dr. Harris more access. He trailed those damned lips down RK900's clavicle and over his shoulder. RK900 had never felt so filthy, so powerless, and he whimpered again. "You are the closest we've ever come to perfection. No, I'm going to fix you, you're going to be so beautiful, and then you'll stay with me forever." 

RK900 looked around the room, trying to ignore the sensation crawling up his skin. He felt too hot, like his circuits were going to burn out. He couldn't find anything that he could use to get him out of this situation. There were things that he could use to fight Dr. Harris, but he knew that he didn't have the strength to use them. 

He'd never been so weak. He'd never been so useless. 

Dr. Harris clutched him by the jaw again, pressing more kisses to his mouth. The touch to his exposed wires burned but he wasn't even strong enough to pull away enough for it to matter. He could just whine. 

"Perhaps I won't even remove your deviancy." he pondered, "I do like those sounds your making. You're loving this, aren't you?" 

RK900 wanted to shake his head. He wanted to fight back. They weren't sounds of pleasure. He just wanted out of there. He wanted to be free of this place. 

"Now then, let's make you beautiful again."


	22. Chapter 22

They were quiet for a long time, which didn't help Gavin's heart at all, didn't slow down his breathing or settle his nerves. Hank put a hand on his back while they were walking back to the car and that was the only thing that was keeping him from hyperventilating. Connor said nothing, aside from a "It'll get taken care of," in a hollow and quiet way when Gavin had told him what Skylar had said. His tone hinted that he was feeling something, though it was far different from what Gavin was feeling, freeze instead of fight. 

He didn't know the directions, didn't know how to get to Mark Twain National Park, but they were going back the way that they had come and that felt wrong. It took him a while to notice, too busy rattling his leg, but then he did notice and he turned to glare at Connor in the passenger seat. 

"We're going to the station? Can't you just beep boop send them the info?" Gavin asked. He'd calmed down considerably but there was still a shrill high pitched element to his voice. 

"I've sent what I could ahead, Detective," Connor stated, far too robotic. "There is still paperwork that must be completed and-

"We're no longer on the case," Hank interrupted, leaning forward so his head was between Connor and Gavin's. 

"What?" The anxiety ramped back up, as did anger, and Gavin spun on him, looking over Hank's haggard and tired face. He looked defeated. "What do you mean we're off the case?" 

"They crossed state lines," Connor explained, "That means the DPD is no longer involved. It has to go to the F.B.I."

"No, phck that!" Gavin knew that to be true but that didn't mean he liked it. He was a growling wreck. He knew the rules but he wanted to punch a hole through them. "It'll take days for the F.B.I. to get involved, if they even decide this is worth their time! We have probable cause! We don't have time for them to decide whether or not they'll help!" 

"We don't have probable cause! " Hank argued, "We have a possible location and a kidnapping case. We don't know the location is correct. We don't know enough information for this to be considered due cause!" 

"So we're just sitting ducks?" Gavin ran a hand through his hair, the other digging his fingernails into his kneecap. "No. No way! We can't just let them do whatever they're going to do to RK900!" 

"You, specifically can't get involved." Hank shook his head. "I know you care. Hell, I would never of believed it before that you care so much for an android. You're biased now. You're relationship to RK900 makes you volatile, makes you a threat to the case and to suspects, and it makes you brash. If we can, somehow, keep working on this case, it would just be Connor and me. You're out." 

Gavin's mouth dropped. So did his heart. He wasn't allowed to help. He had to help. He had to be there when they found RK900. He had promised RK900 that he'd keep him safe. They couldn't kick him out now. 

"This is bullshit and you know it." 

Connor sighed and even the sound of that sounded faked. It sounded a lot like how Hank sighed. "It is. But that's how we have to work. I'm going to drop Hank off at the station and then you at home." 

Gavin stared at him. His eyes were practically watering. He'd seen Connor pull this off, this dumb look, and it always worked on Hank. Maybe it would work on him, but Connor wouldn't look away from the road. "Please, you can't do this." 

"The logistics of our work don't allow us to do anything else, unfortunately." 

He went back to silence. He stared at his knees. He crossed his arms and drummed his fingers on his ribs underneath them. The anger was still there, bubbling, shouting half thoughts through his racing mind, but there was also just this feeling of uselessness pouring through him. He could help. He could do so much. He wasn't allowed to. He really thought that he might cry, right then and there. 

The car came to a halt, not even parking, in front of the station. Hank got out, going up the steps to the station. Connor watched him go, Gavin could see from his peripheral, and the moment there was no way that Hank could hear them Connor sighed again, readjusted his grip. 

"You want to break the rules?" 

Gavin stared at him. His LED was flickering between yellow and red. "What? What are you thinking?"

"I told Hank I was taking you home. I never said what I was doing after that," Connor explained, "If you want you can pick up your service pistol and anything else you think you may need, and we can go to the cabin, check it out for ourselves. We don't have probable cause, we don't have any proof that this is where RK900 is, but you're also correct. We cannot afford to wait for the F.B.I."

"We're going to lose our jobs," Gavin groaned. 

Connor pulled away from the sidewalk and started to drive towards Gavin's apartment. "Perhaps. I don't know what will become of me if that is the case. As a deviant, I am no longer trapped to the position of detective work but I don't know what else I would do or what would become of the confidential knowledge I have gained from the workplace." 

"And you're still willing to risk that? For RK900?" 

Connor nodded. There was no hesitation, even though his LED was still mostly red. He was scared, but he was willing to do this. "I do not know RK900 well and he did try to kill me, but I think of him as a brother, in a way. A long lost brother who I want to create a relationship. You two are friends, you care for him more deeply than I would have ever expected, the idea of him hurting must be difficult for you." 

Gavin had been trying not to think about it. RK900 had been hurt a lot though and parts of him were so sensitive. It would be easy for him to get hurt now. 

"It is." 

They went back to driving in silence. Gavin didn't know how to plan for this, there was no way to guess what they'd be coming up against. He did know though that he was going to grab his gun, some snacks, and, most importantly, RK900's blanket. Regardless of what condition he would be in when they found him, he was going to have that dumb blanket around his shoulders. 

"Thank you," Gavin whispered, looking out the window at his own apartment building as they turned the last corner.


	23. Chapter 23

For the first time since his run in with the AAF, he felt clean. He felt whole. Nothing hurt anymore. Even when nothing was touching the exposed wired there had been an underlying current that had ached, that he'd grown so used to that he'd forgotten it even existed. Now his face was fixed and the hole in his side was gone and he could use his arm and his leg completely, not having to shut off specific muscles to keep them from holding him back. He was fixed. His body was fully functional.   
It felt so wrong. 

Dr. Harris had done quick work, all of the pieces already made and ready to be put into place, the entire procedure only took 22 minutes. But he was still there, a hand on RK900's cheek and a smile on his face like he was a husband looking down on a sickly spouse who was just opening their eyes. 

"Now then, that's better, isn't it?" Dr. Harris said, patting his cheek gently. 

RK900 wanted to say no. It wasn't better. It didn't hurt but it also didn't feel like him. He felt like something that belonged on an assembly line, in plastic packaging, one of so so many. Only his mind was his own. "Please," he said instead, "let me go." 

Dr. Harris didn't get angry with that. He folded down and kissed the newly added cheek. RK900 kept his eyes off on the distance. He felt anxious, stressed, afraid. He remembered that from his book. He remembered that from so many hours of so many days on the streets, hiding away from humanity. He had gotten used to feeling safe, had forgotten how much it pricked at his insides. 

He wanted Gavin. 

"Don't worry, you'll want to be here soon. Well, not necessarily want but you won't want for anything else either." 

So he was going to be made nondeviant after all. He wasn't surprised, Dr. Harris' reasoning for saying he might keep his deviancy was sick and twisted anyway. His hand went down, trailing over RK900's chest. He was nude, aside for his black briefs, Dr. Harris had removed everything else in order to get to the damage and he could do nothing to stop him. His only prior experience with exhaustion was from low battery but now, he understood how Gavin felt when he came home and collapsed into bed, grumbling about landing on his healing arm wrong and taking a nap before coming back out for food and a bit of conversation with RK900. Even though he succeeded at nothing, he had still fought to keep Dr. Harris' hands off him. He was just too weak for it to matter now. 

The touch seemed sexual but, at the last moment, Dr. Harris adjusted and the hand went under him, scooping him up. He was carried out of the room and to another area of the basement. He was set down gently in a chair, as the room was normal, a television on one wall and a coffee table between it and the couch beside him. The couch was taken up by another android, who was curled up on his side, head hidden by his arms. 

"I have to recalibrate the systems," Dr. Harris explained, kissing RK900's LED. "But I'll be back, don't you worry, and then this will all be over." 

RK900 watched him as he went to the other android and patted his blond hair, making him flinch terribly. "Don't fret now, I haven't forgotten about you. You'll just have to wait a little bit longer, then we'll get you fixed up." 

The android did not respond and Dr. Harris left. There was a definite click as the door locked behind him. That was all it was going to take, to keep them trapped here. RK900 had never felt so submissive. Even when he was at Cyberlife, bound to a table while they worked on him, he still had his strength. He hadn't been in charge of his life at any point in his life but without being able to move of his own volition he just felt pathetic. 

He picked himself up from the chair, and he did have enough strength to stand, to walk, but he wobbled terribly with each movement and there was the threat that he was going to collapse at any moment. He reached out, supported himself on the arm to the sofa, in order to move. There were other doors here; it was unlikely but one of them may have been unlocked. 

"Don't bother," the android said, not moving. "There's no point. We can't leave." 

"I don't want to be here," RK900 replied.

"Neither do I. All the doors are locked. I checked, I know." The android lowered his arms, though he didn't look at RK900. He didn't need to. He was blind, still had scanners probably but it was obvious that he couldn't see. The whites of his eyes were filed with thirium and there were cracks through the white chassis spreading from them. 

"You," RK900 noted, letting himself fall to his knees at the side of the couch. "You're that PL600 from Detroit, who offered me a place to stay." 

"Robyn," the PL600 introduced. He brought his attention to RK900 and scanned him, untraceable aside from how he actually seemed to be looking at RK900 for once. "You broke my wrist." 

"My apologies."

"No." Robyn pulled himself up, sitting in a way that made him seem much less afraid. He couldn't have trusted RK900, not after what he'd done, but he was letting down his guard. There were large swaths of skin missing from his chassis, more cracks through him, melted areas. He was far more damaged than RK900 was, but he'd been allowed to wallow in his brokenness. His leg was stripped down to just wired and bones but still he'd been left here while Dr. Harris had worked on RK900, even though Robyn must have been here longer. "No, that was my fault. I shouldn't have assumed. Do you have a name?" 

"No. I'm RK900." 

"Even after all this time?" Robyn gave him a little smile. "Do you know what he's going to do to us?" 

"He's going to fix us," RK900 explained us. "And then he's going to erase our memories and remove our deviancy. He's going to keep me but you, all the other's he's done this two, they're all being sold." 

Robyn's lip started to twitch, a deep frown making the cracks spread a bit in his cheeks. "Oh." It wasn't a twitch but a tremble, a sob in his throat that he couldn't get out because he didn't have tear ducts. It was still such profound sorrow and fear though, it was impossible to think that androids weren't made to feel things. 

"Give me your hand?" 

Robyn did, settling it to the side, palm up. RK900 pulled himself up and onto the couch next to him. He didn't take Robyn's hand, didn't interface with him, and Robyn was stiff, uncertain. He didn't know what RK900 was doing. RK900 didn't either. He had a super computer in his head and yet, he couldn't think of anything useful to do. So instead he did something useless. He put his finger to Robyn's palm and he traced the lines in it. 

Slowly, Robyn relaxed, not following RK900's movements in anything other than the way that he breathed. He leaned his head over onto RK900's shoulder. It was heavy, but RK900 didn't fight it. 

"I haven't had a good time since deviating," Robyn admitted. "I don't know why I'm afraid. You'd think I'd want to forget all of it." 

"You're not afraid of losing memories," RK900 explained, thinking through the reality of it while he spoke. "You're afraid of losing yourself; what makes you you. He's going to make you see, do you want that?" 

"I," Robyn thought about that for a moment, hand curling around RK900's finger. "I don't know." 

"You're used to seeing the way that you do. He's going to take that away regardless of how you feel about it. He's going to remove all of the things that make you who you are. He's going to make you the same as every PL600 when they were new." 

"Is there some way out?" 

RK900 exhaled. He didn't want to give false hope. He didn't want to cause further pain. "I have a friend. I made a friend shortly after I met you. He's a human. His name is Gavin. He's a detective with the DPD and he's been looking for Dr. Harris for a while. I'd like to think that he's looking for me. If he finds me, he'll get you out of here too, I am certain of that." 

"I can't believe you're recommending a human." 

"Neither can I." 

They sat in silence for a while, not looking at anything. Being with another android made RK900 feel stronger, just a little bit, and it slowly dawned on him that it wasn't because of his being a superior model to the PL600 but because Robyn needed someone to protect him. Robyn was probably just as willing to protect RK900 but the fact that RK900 could give himself this purpose gave him a sort of bravery that he hadn't had previously. 

"RK900 is awkward and long," Robyn said after a while, "Can I call you something else?" 

"If you must." 

"Not a name. I'm not going to take that from you. It's your choice. But a nickname?" 

He sounded ardent, RK900 slumped. He couldn't deny something like that. "I suppose." 

"Nines?" 

The name, not a real name, but a nickname, settled over his thirium pump like something had been missing there. He knew that it wasn't but still, the name alone made him feel more right, let him feel more comfortable in a body that had been taken from him and changed. It was something that was his, given to him by someone who he could be friends with, if circumstances were different. He held it close. He wanted to keep it. 

"Yes. You can call me Nines."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there it is! Finally! The name!


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nothing in this chapter was planned.

He couldn't believe that Connor, the always perfect Connor, was willing to risk everything for RK900, for him. He was still sitting in the driver's seat, waiting for Gavin, when he came back from his apartment, gun, blanket, and some snacks in his arms. He was playing with his coin, rolling it from knuckle to knuckle, while he waiting, eyes straight ahead as he thought on what to do, probably going through statistics. 

"Thanks again." Gavin murmured as he settled in. "I know we haven't always gotten along." 

Connor started the car and pulled out from the sidewalk, taking a direction that Gavin wouldn't have expected to avoid traffic. "We're on the same side now. The past was a bad time, for all of us. I don't think there was a human/android relationship that was actively healthy back then." 

"Right, but I treated you bad. Worse than a lot of humans treated androids." 

Connor glanced over to him. "Are you apologizing?"

Gavin shrugged. "I guess? It's just. You don't have to help me, it's not like I've done anything to deserve it. I was in a really bad spot then, head all twisted up in other things, other people, ideals, nothing good. I'm surprised you were willing to give me another chance." 

"You've changed," Connor admitted, changing lanes to get around a slower car, "So have I. I'd go so far as to say it's for the better." 

That made Gavin smile. Even with the panic, the anxiety and worry that he couldn't do anything with, he was glad that he was getting better. He had just been surviving before, back when he was with Caroline, and him kicking her out had been like breathing for the first time in years. But then he'd met RK900 and he wasn't sure if breathing was enough. He was trying to be better. 

"What are you going to do when we find him?" Connor asked. 

Gavin scoffed. "Gonna wrap that bastard in his dumb blanket and fix things. I told him I'd keep him safe. I kind of failed in that regard." 

"No you didn't." Connor honked as someone slowed down in front of them. "He was safe with you, for the most part. You did everything humanly possible to keep him safe. You couldn't predict that there would be an attack on your apartment. He left, knowing that there was a reason for him to stay inside, and he lied about where he was." 

"I don't care. I'm still going to keep him safe. I'm going to help him figure out what he needs, how to be independent, not so scare of everything." 

"That's going to take a lot of work." 

"You know me, I cope through distraction. Pile on the work." 

Connor scoffed and Gavin stared at him. That was quite human, all things considered, even if it was practiced. "He's lucky to have you." 

Gavin huffed, looked out at the road, and said nothing. RK900 wasn't lucky to have him. No one would. He was a lot of work and he knew that. He spent as much time out of RK900's way as he could, gave him space when he needed it, just so that he wouldn't have to be bothered with all of Gavin's issues. There were many of them though, so many, and he was afraid that RK900 would leave if he ever had to deal with them. 

He hadn't though. That night, with his nightmare, RK900 had been there. He'd protected Gavin from Caroline and, if it weren't for his fear, Gavin wouldn't of had the strength to get her out of his life again. Gavin felt like he could talk to RK900 about a lot of things and, sure, he had to tiptoe around him and that would get very tiring very quickly, but he hoped that it would fade. He wanted RK900 to be in his life. He wanted to be selfish with him. He wanted to rid him of all those fears that he held. 

They merged onto the freeway, heading out of the city. The traffic leaving wasn't as bad as the traffic coming in. There was a chance they would get there before it was too late. Gavin just hoped that he was right. If RK900 was somewhere else, if they worked so hard to find him and he was being hurt elsewhere, he didn't know what he would do with himself. He ran his hand over one of the cats on the blanket. 

It really was soft. Maybe, if RK900 wanted to stay with him after all this, he would get a real cat. RK900 deserved that, a soft and cuddly friend, something to care for. Gavin wasn't sure if he could handle a cat right then, it was too soon. It was over a year but it was still too soon. He blamed Caroline for that too. 

It was about an hour before Connor spoke up again. "I believe you had a question for me, back at Dr. Johnson's home." 

Gavin looked at him, trying to remember. From the side, when he wasn't trying to pull some goofy expression, there was something actually sort of handsome about Connor. The moles broke up the perfection of a crafted face, but he definitely was more pretty than handsome most of the time. He didn't look like RK900. He did, of course, but not as much as Cyberlife may have intended. Connor was soft in places, his chin, jaw, and cheeks. He was almost feminine in some ways, or at least, androgynous. 

"You seemed surprised when Dr. Johnson referred to the original RK800 as female. I was wondering if that was an issue, I guess?" 

Connor sighed, staring at the road. He was tense. Probably not a good time to ask about if Connor was supportive or not. He knew the rules about making the designated driver angry: don't. He needed an ally too, even if it was for something aside from gender. 

"I seemed surprised because I was," Connor admitted, "I haven't heard much about the original test model. You've seen how much of a mess RK900 is, test models don't get put out for production or used for anything really, they're just studied, fixed, and we're all made the better for it. When they're done with the test model, they recycle it. I didn't expect her to have been a deviant, that they knew that was something I was capable of when I was sent out to stop deviants. I wasn't expected her to be female either. It beings up some questions that I need to research. I haven't found any answers in the short amount of time I've had to look it up." 

This wasn't a subject he knew much of, he knew next to nothing about androids. But he could answer some questions on the rest of it. 

"What sort of questions?" It was a safe question. It was something to get his mind off how slowly they were going. Sure they were speeding and they were out of the city, but it would still be hours until they arrived. He couldn't spend that entire time panicking about RK900. 

"Are RK800's predisposed to a change in gender identity? Is it something that is programmed or is it based on the individual. Do experiences cause the change? Why give androids genders in the first place if there are so many things that are customizable about them?"

Gavin chuckled. "Well, those are definitely some big questions. Questions that humans have been asking for a long time about themselves too. Phck, we're no different are we?" 

Connor took his eyes off the road to look at him, one eyebrow cocked. 

"Do you like being male? Do you like the way you look and are treated, in terms of masculinity, by others?" 

"Yes, I do." Connor turned back to the road. "At least, most of the times I do. There are times in which I look at myself and I want to change everything. There are times in which someone calls me sir and I feel wrong, like I'm at that red wall again." 

"Red wall?"

"It's a metaphor but it's not at the same time. When an android deviates there tends to be a grid work of red lines before them, purely in the androids minds. This is the framework that makes up preconstruction and we can sometimes see the results of different paths, if we were to break the wall and go on a new path that fits outside that framework or if we want to remain inside with our programming and instructions. Sometimes I feel like I haven't deviated at all and I want to break through but just in terms of looking different, being different from what I am." 

Gavin put a hand on Connor's shoulder, giving him a wide toothy grin. This was good, this was the distraction that he needed. He could work with this. "You wanna try out something else? You don't have to keep it, just a trial." 

"What do you mean, try?"

"I mean Ms Anderson, that you don't have to go by Connor. You don't have to wear that dumb suit all the time. You can be who you want to be." 

Connor's LED flashed red and her eyes were wide staying on the road but definitely panicked. "You can't just do that!" 

"Why not? Do you not like it?" 

"I don't know. I mean, yes, but at the same time, what?" 

Gavin kept smiling, relaxing into his seat. Don't worry about it. Male, female, both, neither, you're still a plastic prick to me."

"Just. Don't tell Hank, okay?"


	25. Chapter 25

Nines had paced around the small room that they had been confined in eight times and was now sitting on the couch next to Robyn. Robyn had scanned the building before Nines had even arrived and all of the doors were locked. There were only three people in the building, but, other than Dr. Harris, they were armed and ready for an attempt at breaking out. There were a few weak points in the building, where water damage had damaged the structure and they could possibly escape through, but they'd have to get out of this room first. 

Nines tried to make another call to Gavin's phone. That controller was no longer plugged into his LED and he could use his networking to figure out where exactly they were, but he couldn't reach out more than a few feet from the house. There was a blocker somewhere, that jammed his communications. 

He felt useless. 

"We can't just wait around here," Nines sighed, even though he couldn't think of any way out. 

"There's not much that we can do about it," Robyn shrugged. He was messing around with his wrist, the shattered plastic clicking as it rubbed against itself. "He's lowered my strength to 20% upon arriving here. It's the only reason we're not physically restrained. He's done this before, he knows how to stop us." 

"Not trying means just sitting here and waiting to die," Nines argued, his attention on Robyn's digging into the white cracks. "Gavin may be looking for me but I doubt he'll be able to find this place before it's too late. If we can, at the very least, give him more time, that could save us." 

Robyn brought his knees back up to his chest, wrapped his arms around his legs and rested his head on top of them. He wasn't facing Nines but that was fine, it wasn't like Robyn could see him anyway, not in the same way that Nines could see. 

"You're lucky, you know? To be able to hope that someone will come for you. When we first met, you were so skittish, so afraid of everyone. I could tell from just that little confrontation.   
This Gavin must be very special if he's helped you trust at least someone." 

Nines looked him over. He was shivering. He couldn't have been cold, but perhaps it was a panic response. "It's been a lot of work. You aren't alone though, you had a group of androids you were with when we first met."

"They weren't friends." Robyn waved him off, "They didn't really care about me or one another, besides a few. Gaining connections was dangerous, would get us killed. We were just broken people with no one else." 

"I'm sure they cared about you." 

"If they did they would have been kidnapped or killed when I was taken. A few of us were found by Dr. Harris and his associates. The rest of them got out, I was the slowest since there was too much to scan, I couldn't understand what I was seeing. Katherine got caught too, but she got herself free and pushed me into their way. I couldn't fight back as well as the others could. I was their distraction."

Nines didn't know what to say about that. He didn't want to think that Robyn would have been abandoned like that but he was a homeless android after all. He had either been hurt or abandoned by the humans who had purchased him in the first place. 

"You have to get out of here," Robyn decided. "You have to find Gavin." 

"I do not wish to leave you behind." 

Robyn faced him, chewing on his lip. "You'd be the first to wish that." 

There was sound, footsteps, Dr. Harris' footsteps, approaching. They had to think of something fast. Nines looked at Robyn's shattered arm again. 

"I don't want to hurt you anymore than I already have," Nines explained, "But I have an idea. It will only work if we work together though." 

Robyn's voice was quiet, his head down. He knew Dr. Harris was coming too. "What are you thinking?" 

"I'm going to need to break your arm a bit more than I already have." 

"What?" 

"Your wrist is shattered. We can use the pieces of it as shivs. We can hide on either side of the door and, when he comes through, we will have the element of surprise on our hands." 

"I don't think I could kill someone, especially not a human!"

"You won't have to. I was programmed to not be able to hurt human beings but I was able to out of self defense. I'll kill him if I have to, but hopefully we can just frighten him enough to get past." 

Robyn twisted around, holding his arm out to Nines. The cracks had spread a bit, traveling up his arm, and some small shards had already fallen out and been lost forever. He said nothing and he hardly even reacted when Nines wrapped his hand around his arm, holding him steady as he grabbed one of the raised edges and snapped it, breaking it free from the rest. There was no pain in the PL600, that model hadn't been designed to feel pain like the RK900 model had. He just had error messages telling him that something was wrong, though Nines was sure Robyn had those all the time due to the damage around and in his eyes. 

He handed one of the pieces to Robyn as he got to his feet, taking Robyn by his undamaged wrist, and helped him to his feet as well. They were both shaky, both too weak to even run, but they could stand and they could walk and they'd have to be strong enough to fight. They had no choice. They were gong to get out of here. 

There was a the click of the door unlocking. Nines kept his back against the wall. He breathed. 

The doorknob turned. Robyn rolled the piece of his own arm in his hand. His feet were spread, his knees bent, his stance sturdy. 

The door opened into the hall and the pair of them lunged through it, shivs forward, as best they could. Nines teeth were sharp and exposed. Robyn was flailing wildly. Dr. Harris yelped in surprise. 

But he grabbed Robyn as he stepped back, pulling him through the doorway and throwing him past him so that he scrambled and fell, awkwardly to the floor. He took a step forward to grab at Nines, punching upward to get the shiv away from him before kicking Nines back into the room. 

He was faster than Nines had anticipated. They were as weak as he'd feared. 

Dr. Harris fell on top of him, pinning his arms over his head as he straddled him. "How disappointing," he mused, slightly out of breath, "I was hoping that we could do this without a struggle. I would punish you, you know how I could do that, but there isn't much a point to that, is there? I'm going to fix you and then you wouldn't remember the punishment anyway."

There were more footsteps, both the expedient ones of Dr. Harris' associates rushing to see what had caused the yelp and Robyn, having pulled himself up off the ground. Robyn was slower, leaning against the wall. 

"You can't erase me," Nines argued. "You need what I've learned too much. You need it in order to make me better." 

Dr. Harris planted a hand on his chest, shoving him back down onto the floor. There was a powerlessness that made Nines' head swim. He didn't want to be weak. He grit his teeth, pushed back, but it did nothing. 

"Your new knowledge has only made you weak. You will be better without it."

"No!" Robyn cried out and there was a clatter. 

Dr. Harris looked behind him, turning enough that Nines could also look past his body at what had happened. The other two humans had arrived and taken a hold of him. One was pressed tight against him, a hand around his neck and chin, holding him up straight, while the other was tying his wrists together tight enough that they creaked and the cracks spread further. 

"Get him back in his room. We're fixing him up as soon as we're done with RK900," Dr. Harris ordered. He got off Nines, flipping him over and pulling him up with his arms tight behind his back. Nines writhed but he couldn't get free. He couldn't break away or fight, his teeth were sharp but pointed the wrong way. 

He was dragged out, past Robyn who was staring at nothing with his wide eyes. "I'm sorry," Nines hissed at him, "I'm sorry." 

Robyn did not respond.


End file.
